Scioto Historical

"Art of the Ancients" Exhibition at the Southern Ohio Museum

2022-09-07T19:10:44+00:00

Upon entering the "Art of the Ancients" exhibition an etched glass panel orients visitors to the prehistory of the Adena and Hopewell peoples who built the mounds, rock cairns, parallel embankments, and other earthworks of the Portsmouth Complex.

“When the last Ice Age ended in the Ohio valley about 14,000 years ago, the people who wandered into this area found flood prone rivers winding through hills of hardwood forests filled with animals to hunt and plants to gather. Starting more than 3000 years ago and lasting about 1500 years, the people we call Adena (1000 BCE-100 CE) and Hopewell (200 BCE-500 CE) prospered throughout southern Ohio and northern Kentucky, settling primarily along the streams and rivers feeding the Ohio River.

“While many details about these two cultures remain unknown, it is possible to uncover clues about their lives by closely examining the objects of stone, bone, shell, and other durable materials recovered from home sites, fields, and burial grounds throughout the area. While you are imagining the lives and stories the objects have to tell, consider that the Adena and Hopewell people were much like us, valuing stability, hard work and family life amid the hills and floodplains of this river valley.”

The exhibition displays over 10,000 items, all of which were collected locally by William V. Wertz (1913-2002) and his father, Charles V. Wertz (1872-1936). Following the death of Charles in 1936, the Portsmouth Daily Times noted that “Mr. Wertz collected relics out of scientific interest rather than a source of profit. W. C. Mills, late director of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, was a close friend and H. C. Shetrone, present director of the society, also was a great admirer of the local student of archaeology.” In 1915 and 1916, Charles V. Wertz assisted Mills and Shetrone in their excavations of Tremper Mound and the Feurt Village and Mounds.

Charles’ fascination with the prehistoric inhabitants of the Ohio Valley was sparked as a child when his father worked on the construction of the Sanford, Varner & Co. Building (known today as the Kricker Innovation Hub) at the corner of Third and Chillicothe Streets. While digging the foundation, workers discovered “an Indian boat” thirty feet below the surface. The mystery captured his imagination and inspired his interest in the local earthworks and mounds and the people who built them. This interest, along with his collection, would be passed down to his son, William V. Wertz, who continued to add items to the collection until his own death in 2002.

Madeline A. Wertz, William’s wife, then donated the collection to the Southern Ohio Museum. At the time, Sara Johnson, the museum’s long-serving Director of Visual Arts, told the Community Common newspaper that “it seems fitting that these remarkable objects remain in proximity to the same lands where they were made. We accept these objects in humility and with reverence for their makers, whom we will honor with a quiet, sensitive installation as we hold them in trust for the public good.”

Following Madeline’s death in 2014 a previously unknown catalog to the Charles V. Wertz Collection was discovered by the Salvation Army, which had received, as a donation, the remaining contents of her house. The catalog had been created in the mid-1940s by Aurelia Hucksoll, a trained archeologist who volunteered her services when the collection was on display at the Portsmouth Public Library. Hucksoll was the wife of Rev. Laurence L. Hucksoll, who served as the minister of Portsmouth’s First Presbyterian Church from 1939 to 1947. Aurelia had received a Master’s degree in Archeology from Columbia University. The Hucksoll catalog was based upon a meticulous inventory, which included item numbering, a physical description, hand-drawn illustrations, and, when known, the item’s site-specific provenance.

“The true significance” of the Wertz Collection, “as a record of sophisticated civilization with a continental trade network tied to the Portsmouth Earthwork Complex, was not fully revealed until the discovery of the Hucksoll Catalog,” notes Emily Uldrich. It is thanks to the provenance recorded by Hucksoll, as well as additional records associated with items added to the collection by William V. Wertz, that it is possible today to associate artifacts with specific mound and village sites that were part of the Portsmouth Earthworks Complex. Uldrich, in her study of the collection and its associated records, explains that although the collection provenance is site specific, “there is no detailed information about the context of the artifacts within the site or mound in which they were found. The artifacts could have been cached below ground level, near the surface, or found on the surface. Unfortunately, this is information we will never know, but we are indebted to the Wertz’s for preserving the artifacts, as most of the sites … are now destroyed.”

Historian Margaret Jacobs in After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands, writes that “Indian grave desecration grew out of brutal Indian massacres." Over time, from the earliest days of European colonization, "it morphed into a pseudoscientific enterprise and then a tourist bonanza. A huge number of settlers took part in this desecration of graves, as they appropriated the land of Native peoples, up to the late twentieth century. The effect has been to eliminate the physical evidence of indigenous people from the land, to make it possible to narrate American history as if it begins with European settlement.”

Amateur excavations and salvage operations during construction projects occurred regularly over the decades, but the area mounds and village sites were also systematically dug by credentialed archeologists from across the United States. Thousands of indigenous artifacts, mortuary objects, and human remains were removed, sold, and dispersed in private and public collections, located far from the Portsmouth area. Looking back now, considering the known history of the mistreatment of Native American peoples, the methods and practices of our predecessors are really not surprising, however disturbing they may be to our present-day moral senses and professional standards.

Thanks to the Wertz Collection, however, it is possible to narrate and illustrate the long history of humanity at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, a history that began thousands of years before European settlement. We know that over the millennia, many different indigenous peoples of different cultural traditions have made their home here, leaving their own mark upon the land and only adding complexity to the surviving archeological record.

The destruction of the mounds and earthworks, along with the unscientific archaeological methods used by local collectors at the time, have only added to the mystery, reminding us today of the importance of preserving what remains. As one of the panels in the “Art of the Ancients” exhibition explains: “We will never know the intricacies of the culture and daily lives of the region’s prehistoric people. Because they left no written language, the knowledge we have of North American prehistory comes from the objects that remain. The purpose of many of these artifacts remains a mystery. However, we do have a shared humanity, evident in our continued interest in tools, ornaments, jewelry, music, games, paint, and figurines.”

The entire Wertz Collection is on public display in an admission free gallery, open to all. For more information on the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, including their hours of operation visit the museum website at https://somacc.com.

Sources

Richard Bussa, ”At SOMACC: Golden Age of Native American History,” Community Common (16 October 2002): 1.

Margaret Jacobs, After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Aurelia C. Hucksoll, "Indian Lore Student Cites Wealth of Relics Displayed in Portsmouth's Library," Portsmouth Daily Times (31 March 1951).

“Late Realty Operator Known as Foremost Archaeologist. Charles V. Wertz Made Hobby of Studying and Exploring Mound Builders Earthworks,” Portsmouth Times (31 July 1936).

“Rev. Hucksoll to Leave City,” Portsmouth Daily Times (17 Oct. 1947).

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"Where Southern Hospitality Begins" by Carl Ackerman (5 September 1964).

2014-10-30T14:58:07+00:00

In the early 1960s, City Manager Frank Gerlach and others championed a new slogan for the City of Portsmouth — “Where Southern Hospitality Begins.” In the summer of 1964, a welcome sign with the slogan was painted on the then bare concrete flood wall at Front and Court Streets. As the fates would have it, the weather was near perfect for the city's second annual River Days celebration and Carl Ackerman himself had the presence of mind to photograph the sign and what could be remembered as the first Portsmouth flood wall mural.

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“Black Friday”: Enforcing Ohio’s “Black Laws” in Portsmouth, Ohio

2022-04-08T17:38:35+00:00

On Friday, January 21st, 1831, the following notice appeared in the city’s paper: “The citizens of Portsmouth are adopting measures to free the town of its colored population. We saw a paper, yesterday, with between one and two hundred names, including most of the house-holders, in which they pledged themselves not to employ any of them who have not complied with the law. The authorities have requested us to give notice that they will hereafter enforce the law indiscriminately.”

Complying with the request of city officials, Elijah Glover, the editor of the Portsmouth Courier, dutifully placed this notice prominently in the columns of his newspaper. According to the oldest historical accounts of the controversy, eighty African American residents of the city were expelled under the threat of enforcement of Ohio "Black Laws."

Among other discriminatory requirements, the "Black Laws" stipulated that all African-American residents were to register with their county clerk, proving their free status. In Portsmouth, that meant that African Americans were to visit the Scioto County Court House, which was originally located in middle of Market Street, between Front and Second Streets.

Runaway slaves who decided for various reasons to make a go at it here -- rather than seek greater security and freedom in Canada -- as well as those who may have been born free but did not have proper papers, made Portsmouth their home, often finding employment on the margins of society, scrapping by in the shadows of the law. Few however, it appears, ever registered.

Nelson Evans, the author of A History of Scioto County, Ohio (1902), provided the now memorable name for the event -- "Black Friday" -- recording the first historical account of this dark chapter in local and American history, under the heading of “Relics of Barbarism.” Evans account reads: ”A Black Friday. On January 21, 1830[sic], all the colored people in Portsmouth were forcibly deported from the town. They were not only warned out, but they were driven out. They were forced to leave their homes and belongings. Between one hundred and two hundred householders had signed a paper to the effect that they would not employ any black person who had not complied with the law. The town authorities had been worked up to the point of agreeing to enforce the savage and brutal ‘Black Laws’ of Ohio."

Evans noted that "the law referred to had been passed January 19, 1804 (Chase, Volume 1, 393). It forbade any black or mulatto person to reside in the State unless they had a certificate from the Clerk of the Court that they were free. Any one was forbidden to hire or employ any black or mulatto person without such certificate, under penalty of $10 to $50, one-half of which went to the informer and other half to the State. Under the law of January 25, 1807 (Chase, Volume 1, 556), no black or mulatto person was allowed to settle in the State without giving bond in $500 for good behavior and against becoming a township charge. If such bond was not given, it was the duty of the Overseer of the Poor, of the respective townships to drive them out. The harboring, employing or concealing of a Negro who had not given such a bond was $100 penalty, one-half to the informer and one half to the great State of Ohio. The same law forbade a Negro to be a witness against a white person."

Evans was notably outraged by the event, writing, “Just think of it! There were over one hundred men in Portsmouth, in 1830, who determined to enforce these laws, and who did enforce them, and then attended the great Fourth of July celebration on July 4, 1831, listened to all the crimes imputed to poor, old, silly, crazy George III, and then thanked God they had never done anything as bad as that, when they had on the previous January 21, 1830, done much worse. The editor [Nelson Evans] does not know the names of the one hundred or two hundred householders in Portsmouth who signed that infamous paper, and hopes he may never know, and that the paper is destroyed. It was not published in the newspapers of that time. As near as we can now determine, eighty black people were deported by the town authorities in 1830 [sic].”

Whatever errors may have crept into Nelson Evan’s account, we can say with confidence that the expulsion notice appeared on a Friday in the year 1831, not 1830 as initiatially claimed by Evans, but beyond that without other documentation we must trust his claims that eighty African Americans -- “all the colored people in Portsmouth” -- were expelled under threat of enforcing Ohio’s discriminatory “Black Laws.”

Working off of Evans’ account, Carter G. Woodson, the father of "Black History Month," probably did more than any historian in popularizing the story of Portsmouth's Black Friday. Woodson included the story in three of his books, A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (1915), A Century of Negro Migration (1918), and The Negro in Our History (1922). Woodson concluded that “despite the 'Black Friday' upheaval of 1831, the Negroes settled down to the solution of the problems of their new environment and later showed in the accumulation of property evidences of actual progress.”

“Black Friday” of 1831, it turns out, was actually the second recorded expulsion of African-Americans from Portsmouth. The earlier expulsion having been lost to time, overlooked by Evans, is to be found in the records of Wayne Township, where Portsmouth was located at the time. Here, one finds the story of the “first negro exodus” in the minutes of the Township Trustees.

At their meeting on the 2nd of March 1818, the Trustees authorized a special payment to Warren Johnson, the township’s constable. The treasurer was ordered to pay him “$4.18 for the fees in warning out blacks and mulatto persons of the township….” At the time, enforcement of the “Black Laws” fell to the local police force, the township constable.

Portsmouth’s history of expulsions was not an isolated incident in the history of the region; the majority of its white residents were no more racist and heartless than those living in other Ohio River cities. Enforcement of Ohio’s Black Laws appear to have been generally episodic and arbitrary, lightly enforced on the whole, but occasionally used to threaten and intimidate black residents of the state.

The most notorious purge occurred not in Portsmouth, but in Cincinnati, in August 1829. There, as in Portsmouth, Cincinnati officials announced that on a certain date they would begin to enforce the “Black Laws.” What followed was a race riot, the destruction of many homes in the black section of the city, and the forced exodus of nearly half of the city’s black population, some of which migrated to Canada.

The expulsions in Portsmouth, however, contributed to the establishment of a black community in Huston Hollow, which proved to be a critical link in the secret and illegal network of area residents, white and black, who helped the runaway slave reach freedom in Canada and other black commuities to the North.

Sources

“The citizens of Portsmouth are adopting measures to free the town of its colored population,” Portsmouth Courier (21 January 1831), Ohio History Center, Vault Newspaper Hardcopy, PORTSMOUTH N287, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio.

“Early History of Wayne Township. Number Five” Portsmouth Times (5 July 1879).

“J. J. Minor account of abolitionist activities, Portsmouth, Ohio, Sept. 1894,” Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio History Connection.

Nelson W. Evans, "A Black Friday" in A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902), p. 613.

Rebecca D. Jenkins, “Forgotten: Scioto County’s Lost Black History” (Bowling Green State University, MA Thesis, 2015).

Nikki Marie Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802-1868 (Ohio University Press, 2005).

Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2005).

Carter G. Woodson, The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 − A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915).

Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (Washington, D.C., 1918).

Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (Washington, D.C., 1922).

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“The Crossing”: Robert Dafford's Underground Railroad Mural in Portsmouth, Ohio

2022-04-06T19:45:18+00:00

Hidden away in plain sight, like the operations of the Underground Railroad itself, one finds Robert Dafford's mural honoring the heroic men and women who fled their enslavement in the southern states, as well as those (white and black) Scioto County residents who helped them do so on a secret network of aid, comfort, shelter, and safe passage.
Dafford's visualization of the the Underground Railroad depicts "The Crossing at Portsmouth, Ohio," highlighting one of the most difficult passages of the freedom seeker's escape -- the crossing of the Ohio River. In this instance, the fleeing fugitives are helped across the water in a small john boat, with the assistance of armed conductors of Portsmouth's Underground Railroad.
Dafford's Underground Railroad mural is imbedded in a larger work depicting a scene at the Battle of Gettysburg, where Portsmouth's own Battery L helped secure the Union's greatest victory, turning the tide of the Civil War. The inset panels tell the larger story of the war before the war and life on the home front when Portsmouth iron workers fabricated plates for the Union Navy's ironclad warships and its women organized to provide relief to the soldiers and comfort to their widows and orphans.
Running along the bottom of the mural, as if serving as the basis for the bloody conflict depicted at Gettysburg, is where one finds Dafford's often overlooked visualization of the Underground Railroad in Portsmouth, Ohio.
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Abandoned Alexandria, Ohio

2013-06-03T17:08:54+00:00

The confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers has long been the site of human habitation, from the ancient Adena and Hopewell to the Shawnee and, lastly, to the Americans of today. The mouth of the Scioto has seen the rise and fall of many villages, some no doubt completely lost to history.
In the fall of 1783, soon after American Independence had been achieved, a major compromise was worked out between the member states of the Confederation. In exchange for Virginia's ceding its claims to lands north of the Ohio River, a tract of land in the proposed Northwest territory would be held in reserve for Virginian veterans who had been promised western lands for their service in the Revolution. And thus, the Confederation Congress created the Virginia Military District (VMD) by setting aside the lands bounded in the East by the Scioto River, to the South by the Ohio, and to the West by the Little Miami.
The VMD was a massive tract of Indian land - over 3.8 million acres that the Shawnee and other Native Americans still believed to be rightfully theirs (and for good reason). Not until 1795, with the defeat of the Western Indian Confederacy at Fallen Timbers and the land cessions of the Treaty of Greenville, did the newly independent United States succeed in conquering these lands and opening them to American settlement
Yet, when the first settlers began arriving in late 1795 and early 1796, only lands on the West Side of the Scioto could be bought and sold, with a clear title. The East Side, where Portsmouth now stands, lay in what was then known as the Congress Lands, a tract of land that ran north along the east side of the Scioto River. These lands would not be sold at public auction until the spring of 1801. Thus, for nearly five years, just as pioneer settlers began pouring into the Scioto valley, only squatters could take up residence on the East Side. Clear title to the land, whether for a lot in Alexandria or for a mill site on nearby Carey's Run, ensured that the first American settlement would be on the West Side. In June of 1799, when it was officially platted, Alexandria was laid out upon the former site of Lower Shawnee Town, an Indian village, which like Alexandria, had been previously abandoned in the 1750s due to flooding.
Thomas Parker, a wealthy Virginian veteran of the Revolution who speculated in VMD lands, was the first American to claim ownership of the western side of the Scioto’s mouth. Parker was an absentee landlord, from Frederick County, Virginia. It was Thomas' brother, Alexander, however, who appears to have first managed his brother's properties in Ohio. Alexander (for whom the village may have been named) was granted power of attorney to dispose of his brother's property in the VMD and it was Alexander who arranged for Elias Langham to survey, plat, and sell lots in the village in June of 1799. Langham, acting on behalf of the Parkers sold seventeen lots on the appointed day, including one for himself, No. 20, a prime corner location, fronting both the Ohio and the Scioto Rivers. The lots ranged in price from $15.50 to $100, with Langham's No. 20 taking the highest price.
Langham would begin construction of a one storied, frame house, but he does not appear to have settled in Alexandria. As one pioneer recollected, "Langham remained there but a brief period. He did not possess the faculty of wearing like leather." Instead Langham cast his fate elsewhere and hired David Gharky, a new arrival, to finish the house, in partial exchange for rent. With Langham pursuing other business affairs to the north, Major John Belli took over the Parker's interests in Alexandria. He too would purchase lots in the town, but resided downriver, first at Washington in Adams County, at the mouth of Ohio Brush Creek, and then at his country estate, Belvidere, at the mouth of Turkey Creek in Scioto County.
Contrary to some accounts that place the county's first celebration of the 4th of July at Isaac Bonser's farm near modern-day Sciotoville, Alexandria clearly deserves the honor and recognition. We find an account in the Freedman's Journal & Chillicothe Advertiser, dated July 11th, 1800, in which Alexandrians celebrated the anniversary at the house of Thomas Hart, who hosted a well-attended ball.
The Advertiser published a list of toasts, which were answered with cheers. After the standard toasting of George Washington and the current administration, they raised their glasses to "the Liberty of speech, the Liberty of the Press and Liberty of Conscience." They prayed that "the North Western Territory become great, and wealthy, and the inhabitants thereof, unanimous to support the rights of Independence under a Republican flag." And, ultimately the toasts concluded with: "May Alexandria prosper & flourish and its inhabitants ever retain a Republican spirit. ... 3 Cheers."
Nearly three years later, in March 1803, when the legislature created Scioto County, the law stipulated that Alexandria should be the "temporary seat of Justice," with the county court conducting its business there "at the house of John Collins." The law, however, provided for the appointment of special commissioners to determine the best location for a permanent seat, which was quickly accomplished by the court's first meeting in August.
The platting of Portsmouth in early April 1803, coincided with the creation of the new county, and it clearly was promoted by Henry Massie with an eye towards securing the permanent seat of justice. The first court session was held in Alexandria on August 9th and 10th, at which time the Grand Jury returned four indictments, three for assault and battery and one for selling liquor without a license. The county seat commissioners (David Selby, John Chenoweth, and Reuben Abrams) also submitted their recommendation in favor of Portsmouth. The court accepted the Commissioners' Report and set its next session for the new town of Portsmouth. Thus, beginning in December, 1803, and ever since, the Scioto County Court of Common Pleas has conducted its affairs on the East Side of the Scioto. Only one session, the first, was held at John Collin's tavern in the now Abandoned Alexandria.
According to David Gharky, who came to Alexandria in the fall of 1799, the years before the county seat fight were a golden age. "Until this time the inhabitants of Alexandria, lived in peace and harmony, like one great family; though nowise related by the ties of blood, but by christianlike neighborship. They would aid and assist each other in times of need; ameliorate the wants, distresses and misfortunes of those who smarted under Fortune's lash, by sympathy, benevolence and charity; thus all of the residents of this town, as well as strangers who came among us, received that aid which is due from humanity to the afflicted and oppressed."
The county seat contest, however, brought an end to the harmony and unity. With "the majority of the humane portion [of Alexandrians] "moving off, the new comers" neglected the virtues of solidarity, brotherhood, or what Gharky referred to as "unity." Instead, he claimed, another rule was "brought in vogue," one of "every man for himself." It was to be a dog-eat-dog world at the mouth of the Scioto and Alexandria would earn the nickname, Hardscrabble, for the meager reward residents wrung from its flooded streets and fields.
Yet, at first, Gharky and others, like Dr. Thomas Waller, refused to abandon neither their investment in Alexandria, nor their vision of the town's ultimate success. As Gharky later explained in his autobiography, "the hope of getting the County seat located here, kept up a lively anticipation of the superiority of our place over Portsmouth." Only after the seat "was permanently established there," explained Gharky, did Alexandria begin "to dwindle into that nothingness which our feuds brought us to."
The Alexandrians, however, did make one last ditch effort to save their dreams. In November, 1803, William Lucas, Sr., hosted a gathering of West Siders, where petitions were signed and depositions taken regarding, what Lucas termed the "corruption in the execution of [the county seat commissioners'] offices.” They asked the state legislature to set aside the corrupt decision and affix the seat as the legislature "may conceive most proper to secure the interest of the said county, and restore peace and tranquility." In other words, they asked the legislature to set aside the original Commissioners' Report and make Alexandria the permanent seat. Their petition campaign failed, their memorial and depositions were tabled in January 1804. Then, in 1805, any doubts were removed, when the legislature officially affixed the seat to Portsmouth. That same year another major flood inundated the homes and businesses of Alexandria, and many residents began to sell out.
The county's first historian, James Keyes, noted that "it was with a great deal of reluctance that they abandoned their comfortable dwellings, and improvements which they had spent so many of the best years of their lives in building up, and remove to other fields and begin life again."
Dr. Waller and his family sold out in 1810. Gharky held out until after he returned from service in the War of 1812, selling his Alexandria property for $450 in May 1814. "Some went further west, some went to the country, and others moved up to Portsmouth," noted Keyes. "Portsmouth was not a lovely place at that time," he explained. "There was nothing inviting about it. It was covered with dense forest. Full of swamps, and wet marshy ground filled with croaking frogs. It was heart rending to have to give up the toil and labor of ten years, and commence again in the woods. But Portsmouth had the advantage of high ground, and that carried the day."
In 1817, Samuel Brown's Western Gazetteer noted the moral decline that accompanied the death of the village: "There are fifteen old buildings, and a tavern well supported by the votaries of Bacchus. Indolence and dissipation characterize the inhabitants." As the original settlers left, the village decayed and eventually what had not yet been carried off would be washed away by the waters of the Scioto and Ohio.
The last remnant of Alexandria washed away in the Flood of 1884. As reported in the Portsmouth Times, on February 16th, 1884, "The remaining land-marks of Alexandria have at last passed away, and the spot where that early inhabited village once stood will only be marked by the crumbled freestone which will be strewn along the bank after the river abates."
The last house to go was known at the time as the "Old Haunted Stone House," because "many relics were hidden within its walls. It was shunned by all on account of ... a skeleton having once been exhumed from over a cupboard under the second story floor."
The Portsmouth Times concluded that "time had come" for the last vestiges of Alexandria and "on Monday [February 11th, 1884] it sank to the bottom of the river to be seen no more."
Sources:
"Alexandria Swept Away. Capt. Wm. R. Smith's Residence en-route for the Gulf Stream and the old 'Haunted' Stone House crumbled beneath the water," Portsmouth Times (16 February 1884).
Samuel R. Brown, "Scioto County" in the Western Gazetteer; Or Emigrant's Directory: Containing a Geographical Description of the Western States and Territories (1817): p. 300.
Barbara Keyser Gargiulo, editor, "Early Reminiscences of Portsmouth," in Scioto County, Ohio Newspaper Abstracts and Historical Reminiscences, 1866-1869 (Milford, Ohio: Little Miami Publishing Co., 2006).
David Gharky, The Life of David Gharky, as written by himself: Also, a Record of the Gharky Family; ... with his Last Will and Testament (Portsmouth, Ohio: John Gharky, 1852).
History of Lower Scioto Valley, Ohio, Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political history, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens (Chicago: Inter-state Publishing Co., 1884).
James Keyes, Pioneers of Scioto County: Being a Short Biographical Sketch of Some of the First Settlers of Scioto County, Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1880).
William Lucas, Sr., "Corruption in the execution of their offices,” Scioto Gazette (29 October 1803).
"Ohio Legislature: Extract from the Journal of the House of Representatives, April 8th, 1803," Scioto Gazette (30 April 1803).
"The Pioneer Reviewed," Portsmouth Times (30 August 1873).
"Toasts," Freedman's Journal & Chillicothe Advertiser (11 July 1800).
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B. Glockner on Market Street: The Hardware Store Origins of an Automobile Empire

2019-09-19T04:00:48+00:00

The B. Glockner Building at 206 Market Street illustrates the contribution of German immigrants to the nineteenth century development of Portsmouth, Ohio. And the building's restoration -- following a fire in January 2016 -- has contributed to the cultural and economic revival of the city's historic Boneyfiddle District.
Tim Glockner (the great-great-great-grandson of Bernard Glockner, for whom the building is named) purchased the property in 2017, with the goal of celebrating the past, present, and future of the family business, which had its start in the building in 1874. What began as a hardware and cutlery store on Market Street would develop into an automobile dealership in the 1910s when Alex Glockner, son of Bernard and Magdalene began selling Chevrolets in Portsmouth.
Today Bernard Glockner is rightly celebrated as the founding patriarch of the Glockner business empire that includes dealerships throughout southern Ohio and northeastern Kentucky. "Bernie G." has become a "local legend," whose life is commemorated with a beer named in his honor. The creation of the Portsmouth Brewing Company (whose origins also are found in the city's German immigrant community), "Bernie G." is a Dortmunder Lager (4.5% ABV). The back label reads: "Here’s to Bernie, the historically hardworking people of Portsmouth, Ohio and everyone who believes in the American Dream.”
He was born in 1825 in the village of Bingen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Bernard immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-two and settled in Portsmouth in 1847. His earliest days in the town are obscured by time, but he eventually found employment with J.L. Hibbs & Co., a hardware store located on Front Street.
In 1854, Bernard married Magdalena Beck, another native of Bingen, who had immigrated to the United States in 1853. The following year, she would give birth to their first son, Frank. Five more children followed.
Over the next two decades Bernard learned the hardware trade, established a reputation as a talented salesman and ultimately saved enough money to purchase the hardware business of another successful German immigrant, John Rottinghaus.
Rottinghaus had himself purchased the business from another earlier German immigrant, S. J. Meyer. And from reporting in the Portsmouth Times it appears that the hardware business purchased by Bernard in 1874, had its origins in April 1859, when Meyer and C. Brown “opened a new hardware store on Market Street.”
Bernard would successfully run the business for two years, before an untimely death in 1876. His widow, Magdalena, would then oversee the company’s business for nearly thirteen years before she was severely injured by a fall off one of the store’s step ladders. She may never have fully recovered from the accident — Magdalena Glockner died two years later in 1891.
Magdalena emerged as a pioneering Portsmouth business woman. After Bernard's death, she would change the company's name to M. Glockner & Sons. And following her death, son Alex would ultimately take the helm of the company and under his leadership bicycles, tractors, horse-drawn buggies, and eventually automobiles became the family's primary line of business.
In 1912, Alex opened the company's second and enlarged location at the corner of Gallia and Gay. Three years later he secured the firm's first automobile franchise from W.C. Durant of Chevrolet Motors. Beginning in September, coinciding with the city's annual fall festival, Alex Glockner advertised his first two models, a four passenger and a five passenger "touring car," selling for $490 and $750, respectively (the equivalent of $12,286 and $18,805 in 2018).
On October 12th, 1915, the Portsmouth Daily Times reported: "Alex M. Glockner was all smiles Tuesday when a carload of Chevrolet automobiles arrived at his address [on] Gay and Gallia streets. The car load consists of one Baby Grand and two of the ‘Four-Ninety’ models and they are now on display. No sooner had they arrived than a large crowd collected to view this famous make of cars, which considering their size and beauty, are generally regarded as exceptionally cheap in price.”
Today, Glockner's is recognized as "the oldest continuously owned and operated" Chevrolet franchise in the United States. And this original agency is now part of a "family of dealerships," which includes Honda, Toyota, Ford, GMC, Buick, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and RAM brands, with locations in Portsmouth, Ironton, South Point, Waverly, Jackson, Chillicothe and Ashland, Kentucky.
With its humble beginnings in a mid-nineteenth century German immigrant-owned hardware store, the evolution of the business and the restoration of the B. Glockner Building illustrates how one family's entrepreneurial and civic spirit (and a commitment to historic preservation) can contribute to a city's longterm economic development.
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Bear Lake & Horse Camp

2013-05-21T21:08:40+00:00

Bear Lake is situated deep in the heart of Shawnee State Forest and only adds to the scenic beauty of what is now known as the Horse Camp. Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from Camp Bear Creek built the reservoir in 1934 and ever since it has been a favorite spot for forest vistors.
Today, Bear Lake is the location of the popular Horse Camp, where horse enthusiasts camp out and ride the forest's many bridle trails.
One of six lakes originally built with CCC labor, Bear Lake was the first to be finished in 1935. Floyd Chapman, a Field Ecologist with the Ohio Division of Conservation who studied the work of the CCC in southern Ohio, noted that these "lakes were built primarily to provide water for CCC Camps, but are being used at present [in 1938] for public recreation, including fishing, boating and swimming. Such lakes are likewise valuable to wildlife, promote better plant growth, and aid in flood control."
In Chapman's Ph.D. dissertation, which he completed at the Ohio State University, we find the following statistics on Bear Creek Dam.
- Height of dam above stream level ...... 24 ft.
- Height of spillway above stream level ...... 17 ft.
- Length of dam ..... 270 ft.
- Width of dam at base ...... 110 ft.
- Watershed area ...... 330 acres
- Area of impounded water ...... 3 acres
- Storage capacity of reservoir ..... 5,500,000 gallons
- Cost of materials ..... $1016.00
- Total cost (est.) with CCC labor ..... $8000.00
- Man-days of CCC enrollee labor .... 5090
- CCC enrollee pay per diem ...... $1.00
Sources:
Floyd Barton Chapman, "The Development and Utilization of the Wildlife Resources of Unglaciated Ohio," (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1938), pp. 212-216.
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Bessie Tomlin and the Ohio River Flood of 1937

2013-05-29T21:56:13+00:00

When the Flood of 1937 hit Portsmouth, Bessie Tomlin, like others in the city's African-American neighborhood, first found safety on the second floor of the Booker T. Washington School. But soon she and the other refugees at the Washington School would run out of food and water, and heat, and would need to be evacuated by boat to the other refugee centers in the dry Hilltop neighborhoods. The story of Tomlin's death by drowning resurfaced in the 1990s and has since gone onto inspire local artists and musicians. Her grave in Greenlawn Cemetery was refurbished with a new engraved black marble stone, her image etched into its face. Robert Dafford's flood wall mural, perhaps more than any other image, commemorates the tragedy in the popular imagination. While Rob Black, a local musician with the Boneyfiddle Project, has written and recorded "Bessie Lift Your Baby Up," which tells the story in song. Her untimely demise, told here, has become forever linked with that of the Flood of 1937.

All the public schools in Portsmouth, Ohio, closed at the end of the school day on January 21, which, as luck would have it, was the last day of the semester anyway. Schools located in the flood zone were opened up for storing furniture (on the upper floors, of course), and all the students’ books were locked in one room. Hilltop schools, which still had heat, opened to refugees, and the students were asked to take their textbooks home with them, to free up as much space as possible.
The local schools utilized for refugee housing included: Lincoln, Highland, Garfield, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Rosemount. At one point, Lincoln School, located on the northwest corner of Kinney’s Lane and Waller Street, held about 1,600 people, before several hundred were evacuated elsewhere due to overcrowding. Highland, on the northwest corner of Hutchins and Logan streets, held as many as 1,300. Garfield, at the northeast corner of Gallia Street and Mabert Road, held at least a few hundred, and at one point a sandbag barrier was necessary to keep water out of the basement and keep the heat running.
McKinley, on Kinney’s Lane at the north end of Baird Avenue, held 400 people before being converted to a hospital on January 29. For a time, the Booker T. Washington School, located at the corner of Eleventh and John Streets, also held refugees, but it had to be evacuated as floodwaters quickly reached it.
During the evacuation of Washington School, the drowning of Portsmouth’s only 1937 flood victim occurred. On Monday, January 25, emergency workers were evacuating refugees from Washington School, which had been without access to food or fuel for a day and a half. One boat, commanded by a fireman named Walter Chick, departed Washington School around 7:00 pm that evening carrying eight refugees. The boat was rowing towards Waller Street, which it would then follow north to Lincoln School on the Hilltop. However, as the boat was turning left (north) from Eleventh Street onto Waller, a wave of water splashed into the boat. The splash startled one of the occupants, a 22-year-old African American named Bessie Tomlin, who stood up from her seat, making the boat unstable.
The boat then turned over, spilling Tomlin and everyone else into the cold, muddy floodwater. Chick recovered, either stabilizing his own boat or finding his way to another, in time to answer Tomlin’s cries of “Save my baby! Save my baby!” as she struggled to hold her 18-month-old daughter Alberta above the water. Chick grabbed the child from Tomlin’s hands but could not grab Tomlin herself in time, and she slipped away under the water.
Additional rescue boats picked up the overturned boat’s other occupants, which included Tomlin’s two sons and mother-in-law. Rescuers took them to an emergency hospital that had been set up at the Church of Christ, at the corner of Grant and Summit streets, where they were treated for minor injuries.
On February 1st, 1937, a week after her drowning, when much of the floodwater had receded, someone discovered Tomlin’s body at the corner of Tenth and Waller streets, one block from where her boat had tipped over. Tomlin’s funeral took place at the Emrick Funeral Home, at 2:00 pm, Tuesday, February 2, and she was buried in Greenlawn Cemetery in Portsmouth.
Her husband, William Tomlin, two sons, Herschel Lee and David Taylor, and her baby daughter, Alberta Madeline survived her.
Bessie Tomlin, according to Jerry Holt, a noted author and former dean at Shawnee State University, was “on the run from an abusive husband” and had been staying with relatives when the flood struck. According to the Portsmouth Times, Tomlin’s husband, William, was employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and “was helping move furniture from the first floor of the Second Presbyterian Church when the tragedy occurred.”
Tomlin, who was expecting her fourth child at any time, is hailed as the “only victim” of the 1937 flood in Scioto County. However, a second flood-related death did occur in Scioto County on Thursday, January 28, and for the sake of completeness will be mentioned here.
Everett Conley, a 32-year-old Franklin Furnace man, had made a bet with his friends that he could swim two hundred yards through the floodwater, fully clothed. Unfortunately for him, he became fatigued while still at least fifty feet from shore, and he drowned before anyone could help him. Perhaps secondary sources have ignored this second flood death in Scioto County because it was, in a manner of thinking, Conley’s own fault for making the wager in the first place, and so the accident was not entirely “accidental.”
Some later examinations of Tomlin's story have also noted the fact that the white fireman Chick acted quickly and without racially-oriented thought to save an African American child from drowning—and would have saved the mother, too, had he been able to reach her in time. According to Shawnee State University history professor John Lorentz, “The story [of Bessie Tomlin] was kind of lost to history. Race had something to do with it.” The painting of the flood wall murals and the recovery Tomlin's story helped retrieve this lost chapter of history. In June 2001, Alberta Tomlin Parker had a joyful meeting with David Chick, son of Walter Chick. She said, “When I met him, I was so thrilled. He said, ‘I have a black sister now.’"
The case of Bessie Tomlin was an isolated, unfortunate incident. Everyone else who was transported to the schools arrived there safely and found two good meals daily and warm beds. The American Red Cross provided most of the food, which they prepared at the schools, nearby churches, and neighbors’ homes. On Monday, February 1st, the refugee schools even began issuing meal tickets to those staying there. However, they soon became extremely crowded, as refugee numbers exceeded one thousand in schools such as Lincoln and Highland.
Authorities ultimately evacuated many refugees to other cities, to relieve overcrowding on Portsmouth’s Hilltop area. By Friday, January 29, they had reduced the total number of refugees occupying city school buildings to just over 2,060 people. However, the Portsmouth Times announced on February 1st that school children would remain on “vacation” for at least two more weeks, as schools continued to house refugees and store furniture, even as floodwaters were receding, while residents cleaned up their homes.
Editor's Note: This story originally appeared as "Living with the Flood in Portsmouth,” in Lisa M. Pasquinelli's The Great Ohio River Flood of 1937 (Dayton, OH: Wright State University, 2005), 12-15. You may read this and other bits of southern Ohio history on her blog, "Glancing Backwards" at http://lisarickey.wordpress.com/.
Sources:
“1500 Taken Out of Town,” Portsmouth Times (27 January 1937): 2.
“2,062 Refugees Make Schools Their Quarters,” Portsmouth Times (30 January 1937): 3.
Mark Ellis, “Mural Tells of Disaster that Hit Portsmouth 65 Years Ago,” Columbus Dispatch (26 February 2002).
“Flood Victim’s Body Found on 11th St.,” Portsmouth Times, 2 Feb. 1937, 2
“Homeless Use City Schools,” Portsmouth Times (22 January 1937): 1.
“Housing Biggest Problem Facing Relief Leaders,” Portsmouth Times (28 January 1937): 3.
John Lorentz and Nathan Lorentz, River Voices: A Portrait of an American River Community (2002).
Lisa M. Pasquinelli, "Living with the Flood in Portsmouth,” in The Great Ohio River Flood of 1937 (Dayton, OH: Wright State University, 2005), 12-15.
“River May Go Over 62 Feet,” Portsmouth Times (21 January 1937): 7.
“Special Train Takes Group; More May Go,” Portsmouth Times (26 January 1937): 1.
“School is Made into Hospital,” Portsmouth Times (30 January 1937).
“Woman Drowned as Boat Tips Over; First Victim,” Portsmouth Times (26 Jan. 1937): 1-2.
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Booker T. Washington School on Eleventh Street: Public Education and Racial Segregation in Portsmouth, Ohio

2019-02-08T23:17:26+00:00

Portsmouth City Schools opened their first segregated facility for African American students in 1859, marking the first time that black residents were able to receive a public education. The school and teaching was run by a "Mrs. Weaver," a member of the city's black community. Seven years later, in August 1866, the school board "contracted with Messrs. Hard & Conway to build a brick school-house on the corner of Ninth and Washington streets, for colored schools, for $2,260."
In 1872, when an elected City School Board was officially established in Ohio law, John Q. Weaver -- whose wife may have been the "Mrs. Weaver" in charge of the Ninth Street School -- was elected to represent the old 4th Ward, making Weaver the first African American elected to a public office in the history of Portsmouth and Scioto County. Weaver had been born free in Murfreesboro, North Carolina on 25 November 1825 and was named in honor of John Quincy Adams, who was President at the time. He learned the trade of barber and served as the personal attendant of Commodore Jesse Wilkinson, who commanded the Raritan, the flagship of the US Navy's Gulf Squadron during the Mexican War. Following the war, Weaver would eventually find work as a barber on Capt. William McClain's Steamer, the Bostona, which was involved in Portsmouth's Underground Railroad operations.
In June of 1858, soon after taking employment on the Bostona, John Q. and his wife, Mary, would settle in Portsmouth, where he opened a barbershop. He quickly emerged as a black civic leader, with he and Mary becoming pillars in the city's black community. In the 1870s, he would operate the Biggs House Barber Shop and Bath Rooms, offering his services in the city's most luxurious hotel.
As the black residential neighborhood of Portsmouth shifted northward, eventually being pushed above the original railroad lines that ran east to west along 10th Street, the school board would also relocate what they termed the "colored school" to the corner of Eleventh and Johns Street in what was becoming known as the North End neighborhood.
The Board purchased the parcel from Judge F. C. Searl for $2,500. Designed by J. Hobbs and Son of Philadelphia and built for $8,067, the two-story structure, known as the Eleventh Street Colored School, opened in September 1876, with six rooms, accommodating over 350 students.
At the time, Ohio Law did not require integrated schooling, but rather allowed for school boards to organize black-only schools, when such facilities were equal to those of the white-only schools. In May of 1885, the Board took up a recommendation from a Board sub-committee that "hereafter no distinction be made in the High School on account of color." What followed, according to a newspaper report, was "a free expression of opinion," which "revealed the fact that the Democratic members were opposed to the adoption of the clause, and the Republicans, with perhaps one exception, were in favor of it. Yet the members of each party disclaimed being governed by any political [partisan] feeling or [racial] prejudice either way, each aiming only at the welfare of the schools."
The Times reported the remarks of the Board's only African American member, a Mr. Hailey, who "said his people ... simply wanted what the law allowed them, and if it was thought the admission of colored pupils to the High School would be detrimental to the interests of that or the other schools, they would not push their claim. The welfare of the schools in the aggregate was paramount with him." When he made his final remarks on the question, Hailey "said all they asked was that their children have the same facilities as those of the whites. They simply came to the Board asking justice, and he knew that the Board would do what was right." When the votes were counted, however, the motion to integrate the high school "lost, a majority in its favor being wanting."
The black families of Portsmouth, however, did not give up and soon a petition drive secured "hundreds" of signatures of black residents who supported the integration of the high school. But, the petition, submitted by Mr. Hailey, was tabled, according to a board member's objection, because it had been "couched in language disrespectful to the Board and the teachers employed by the same."
The resistance to integration of Portsmouth High School was brought to a head when a lawsuit was filed in the Scioto County Court of Common Pleas by Jacob Johnson, "the father of Narcissa Johnson" and notice served "on the Board of Education and Superintendent Cox." Johnson worked as a teamster, hauling stone for the local quarries and saw mills and was President of the Hope Hose Fire Company No. 5, an all-African American volunteer company of fire fighters who served the North End neighborhood.
The Portsmouth Times opposed the movement to integrate and employed racist rhetoric to describe the lawsuit's attorney, H. W. Farmer: "The Board of Education had better look out for its scalp. The war paint is being mixed, and ere many moons the braves, under chief Farnham, will have taken the trail and gone in quest of the treacherous pale faces who have turned the dusky children away from the white High School."
Those on the board who wished to fight the lawsuit lost by one vote. The Portsmouth Times would report "that a majority of the Board are opposed to the abolition of the color line in the High School. Had Mr. Huston been present his vote would have been for the motion which would have been decisive." But, with the Board's only black member, Mr. Hailey providing the crucial vote, Portsmouth High School would be officially inetgrated as of November 7th, 1885, when the Scioto County Common Pleas Court "granted them permission to all privileges of High School."
Narcissa Johnson was undoubtedly among the first black students to enrolled in PHS in the fall of 1885, but the honor of being the first African American graduate belongs to Louise Elizabeth Parker, whose obituary in 1911, stated that she was recognized as "the first Black graduate of PHS."While PHS would operate on an integrated basis, the city's elementary schools remained basically segregated by residential zoning, with the Eleventh Street School Zone covering the North End neighborhood. Thus, there was no written policy segregating the races in Portsmouth City Schools. Rather their organization into neighborhood elementary schools, which fed into one high school allowed for the high school to be integrated while the elementary schools could continue to be organized into school zones that reflected the residential segregation that had come to characterize Portsmouth as it grew in the nineteenth century.
Indeed, Portsmouth's growing black population, which showed particular dramatic growth in the first decades of the twentieth century as a result of the Great Migration, led to complaints, as earlier as 1923, from parents regarding over-crowding and an inadequate gym facilities for students at the Eleventh Street School. The Daily Times reported in 1925 that "attendance at the Eleventh street school is the largest in the history of the building, 268 pupils being matriculated this term." The Board was forced to purchase "a portable building" as a "temporary arrangement."
The School Board ultimately responded with more permanent measures and in 1927, a new school structure -- the Booker T. Washington School -- was built adjacent to the original Eleventh Street School. The original architectural plans, which were created by DeVoss & Donaldson, a local firm, envisioned the demolition of the old structure, but ultimately the school board decided to retain the older building by attaching it to the new school. Built for $65,394 by W. J. Linn Construction Company, the new Washington School would continue to use classrooms in the old Eleventh Street School until the mid-1960s, when the the whole school was finally closed.
Closure of the school followed a decade's long battle, begun in 1952 by local families and Civil Rights organizations to end segregation at the Washington School. After a failed lawsuit in the early 1950s, prior to the US Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education Decision, it would take more than a decade of additional struggle and protest for the Portsmouth City School Board to finally end segregation in the city's schools.
Sources
Rebecca D. Jenkins, "Forgotten: Scioto County's Lost Black History," MA Thesis, Bowling Green State University (2015).
Nelson W. Evans, A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902), 490-492.
History of Lower Scioto Valley, Ohio (Chicago: Inter-state Publishing Co., 1884), 209.
"The Color Line. Will It Be Advanced so as to Take in Our High School?" Portsmouth Times (9 May 1885).
"Colored Children Will Not Be Admitted to the White High School" Portsmouth Times (30 May 1885).
"The Board of Education," Portsmouth Times (3 October 1885): 2.
"The Color Line. The School Board and Professor Cox Made to Face Legal Music," Portsmouth Times (24 October 1885): 3.
"Backed Down! The Board of Education Abandons Its Position on the Color Line, and Colored Children will Waltz into the White High School," Portsmouth Times (31 October 1885).
"Court News," Portsmouth Times (14 November 1885): 2.
"J. Q. Weaver Dies Tuesday," Portsmouth Times (16 September 1905): 3.
"Martyr for Education," Portsmouth Times (12 August 1911): 9.
"Building Crowded," Portsmouth Daily Times (25 September 1925): 12.
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Buckhorn Ridge & William Flagg

2012-12-13T15:20:36+00:00

Hike or ride along historic Buckhorn Ridge Bridle Trail, which runs through the heart of the Shawnee Wilderness Area, dividing the waters of Upper and Lower Twin Creeks.
In the 1850s, William Flagg, a New York City businessman-turned novel writer, once sought refuge and enlightenment here, as he oversaw his stone quarry business. At the Point of Buckhorn Ridge, where Flagg built his log cottage, experience one of the region’s most dramatic Ohio River overlooks, with the formerly hustling river town of Buena Vista now resting almost silently below.
Flagg, while visiting a sister in Cincinnati, had first fallen in love with the daughter of Nicholas Longworth, one of the Queen City’s most wealthy and powerful businessmen, and longstanding promoter of the wine making industry in the Ohio Valley. He then became enthralled with the world in the hollows and along the ridges of what is now the Shawnee Wilderness Area. Flagg would plant vineyards and orchards on his lands on Lower Twin Creek, where he also built a stone cellar for storing his wine. Flagg spent extended periods of time here in the 1850s and 1860s, until the cabin burned in an unexplained fire.
In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a road to the Point of Buckhorn Ridge and this road serves as a testament to the quality work done by the CC Boys. After its closure in 1972, once the area became protected as a Wilderness, the road has only been minimally maintained as a horseback bridle trail.
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Buena Vista Freestone Company Store

2013-05-03T14:16:58+00:00

Coming Soon!
The story of the Buena Vista Freestone Company and John M. Mueller, its sole proprietor.
Learn about Mueller's operation, which included quarries up nearby Vastine Hollow, a saw mill and stone office building on the banks of the Ohio, and sales offices in Cincinnati and New York City. "The Stone House in Buena Vista" is one of the many highlights of the Scenic Scioto Heritage Trail and this and other stories associated with the history of the Shawnee Wilderness Area are currently under development and will soon appear here in Scioto Historical.
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Burning of CCC Camp Adams: Segregation & Sabotage in Ohio's Shawnee State Forest

2012-12-14T15:20:28+00:00

In June of 1936, Robert Fechner, the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps addressed a letter to two Ohio senators, Robert J. Bulkley and Vic Donahey, regarding complaints he had received from Nimrod B. Allen, Secretary of the Columbus Urban League. Allen claimed that CCC officials had discriminated against black Ohioans in violation of the non-discrimination clause that had been included in the federal legislation which created the jobs program. Fechner defended the CCC and claimed that the law had required that black enrollments be no less than the percentage of African Americans in the general population. According to Fechner, segregation by itself was not considered to be discriminatory, following the general principals of “separate, but equal,” as laid down by the US Supreme Court in their infamous Plessy vs. Ferguson decision in 1896.
“Whether we like it or not,” explained Fechner, “we cannot close our eyes to the fact that there are communities … that do not want and will not accept a Negro Civilian Conservation Corps company. This is particularly true in localities that have a negligible Negro population.” In hopes of over-coming what Fechner described as “vigorous” local opposition, he directed that black CCC units be only assigned to camps located within their home states. Fechner explained that even this proved to be insufficient as evidenced by an incident in Ohio, wherein a “camp had been assigned to a work project near one of your smaller cities. We went ahead and built and equipped the camp. When a company was selected to occupy the camp it was found that the only company available was one composed of Ohio Negro enrollees.” The end result, “when the citizens of the community learned that a Negro company was to be sent to the camp,” wrote Fechner, “they absolutely refused to permit the company to occupy the camp and we were forced to completely abandon the project.” The CCC Director provided no further specifics in his letter to the senators, never mentioning which Ohio community and which camp had been so vigorously resisted.
Local opposition to the New Deal jobs and conservation program was not unusual, but the introduction of segregated black companies of CCC enrollees into predominantly white communities did prove, in some instances, to be particularly volatile, as racial tensions did on occasion flare up. One such incident, which may or may not have been the case mentioned by Director Fechner, occurred in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio.
On December 6th, 1934, a suspicious mid-day fire destroyed the barracks and camp of a segregated, black company of CCC enrollees. Co. 584 had first arrived at Camp Adams in the Shawnee State Forest nine months earlier. One of seven camps in the state forest (four of which that were African-American), Camp Adams was the most remote, located deep in the forest, near the Scioto and Adams County line.
With unemployment rates as high as 25% nationally, and perhaps as high as 50% for African Americans, the Great Depression provided the impetus for the creation of a major national jobs program that was directed at reforestation and soil conservation, but also came to include the construction of over 800 state parks. In Ohio, the State Relief Commission worked with county commissioners and their relief agents to “select single men between the ages of 18 and 25, primarily from families on the relief rolls.” Enrollees agreed to a six-month enlistment and, in turn, would receive $30 a month, $25 of which had to be sent back home to family dependents. They got to keep $5 a month for their personal use. Thus, the CCC enrollees became known as the “Dollar-a-Day Boys.”
The role of African-American enrollees in the construction of Shawnee State Park and Forest has long been forgotten and conflicts between the segregated camps and members of the local community have been essentially lost to time. In total, while the camps were occupied, some 800 African-Americans were at work in Shawnee.
Records of the fire that destroyed Camp Adams proved be easy to locate, but frustratingly few in number. A photographic record of the camp and its African American enrollees surfaced in the records kept by the Ohio Division of Forestry. There we find pictures of the burnt barracks and other buildings of Camp Adams, recorded soon after the blaze in December 1934. Reports showed up in regional newspapers, including the most detailed account of the conflagration and its immediate aftermath, which was published by the Portsmouth Times.
On December 7th, the Daily Times reported that a special army board of inquiry had been launched by Major Robert Barrett of Ft. Hayes in Columbus and Captain Elmer J. Armstrong, the District Commander of CCC units in the southern Ohio. Initial reports indicated that “more than 180 men of the company were working in Shawnee forest and only 18 were on camp duty when the blaze was discovered.” The Daily Times noted that “the camp is in Churn creek valley and a strong wind was sweeping between the hills. …. The four barracks, kitchen, mess hall, recreation building, power house and supply building were destroyed.”
Captain Armstrong, the district commander, who happened to be visiting a nearby sister camp — CCC Camp Gordon on Turkey Creek — arrived on the scene of the fire just in time to see all but the Administration building go up in smoke. Before the fire had subsided Armstrong had already submitted a request up the chain of command for an immediate transfer of Co. 584 to Fort Knox in Kentucky. Within seven hours of the fire, nearly 200 African American enrollees had been sent by truck to the Norfolk & Western railway station in Portsmouth, where a special train would carry them west to Ft. Knox. The Daily Times reported that the “enrollees will either be assigned to work on the reservation at Fort Knox or will be distributed to other CCC camps to complete their term of enlistment.”
At Fort Knox, Army officials completely exchanged the roster of Co. 584. The unit kept their original number, Co. 584, but they were reconstituted as an all white company of newly minted enrollees and within five months — by the end of April, 1935 — Co. 584 was back on Churn Creek in Shawnee Forest. This time, however, they were white dollar-a-day boys, not black. The company, in another unusual move, was soon switched out four months later in August, and replaced with a new segregated black unit, Co. 3506.
Two questions we may never know the answer to are as follows:
1. Was the decision to remove the unit and exchange the company’s roster done to resolve a situation that had already proven to have a tendency towards violence and property destruction? In other words, did the CCC and Army suspect racially motivated sabotage and arson and then act accordingly?
2. Was the decision to station another black unit at Camp Adams a deliberate political move on the part of state and/or federal officials. In other words, is this evidence that CCC and state officials ultimately decided not to cower in the face of local opposition.
The case for arson and sabotage — the case for a hate crime — is circumstantial. Camp inspection reports and other race-related controversies did end up in the local courts and press, and they do suggest the possibility of racially fueled foul play.
The initial official explanation of the fire was based upon the conclusions of W. G. McGrew, the company commander, and Major Elmer J. Armstrong. They concluded the fire had resulted from the carelessness of an enrollee who “failed to close the draft” on the wood stove in his barracks. The stove’s fire, it was said, had been rekindled at the noon hour (as usual) by one of the eighteen men who were on camp duty for the day. His error, according to this explanation, caused the barrack to burn and its flames and embers were then blown by the wind so that the fire spread to other nearby structures. The timing of the blaze is also notable, as it came in the early afternoon when the vast majority of the men were at work in the forest.
Most significantly, however, the fire occurred in the months following a violent incident that had led to the arrest of the company’s baseball team and arguably contributed to local opposition to the enrollees in the community. On Sunday, May 27th, 1934, while traveling to play a game in the nearby town of Manchester, the black enrollees of Co. 584 passed a truck carrying another baseball team — a group of white locals — who played in a different league. Whether fighting words were exchanged or not (the record is unclear), the two teams continued on their way without recorded incident. However, in the late afternoon, when both teams were returning home by the same routes, they passed again. This time, one of the CCC men swung a bat and struck one of the white players, hitting him “on the forehead and side of the face, knocking his eye out upon his cheek and causing other injuries” — such was the account recorded in a Congressional Report on the incident.
With the incident occurring just outside the town of West Union, the Adams County Sheriff arrested all of the CCC ballplayers and lodged them in the county jail. At first they refused to identify who amongst them had delivered the brutal blow, but when Captain V. O. Jackson, their commander arrived and personally threatened the men with expulsion from the CCC, explaining that after seven days they would be listed as AWOL and dismissed. Ultimately, Wilkins Green was identified and offered up to the authorities. The other men were released. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, on Thursday, the 31st of May, after four nights in jail, the charges against Green were dismissed. E. B. Edgington, the Mayor of West Union, questioned ten witnesses and concluded that there was “no evidence against [the] accused.” The Prosecuting Attorning E. S. Young, however, “indicated that an additional investigation would be made of the affair with the view of presenting the facts to the grand jury.” Whether Young ever took a case to the grand jury is unclear, but no record of an indictment and trial are known to exist.
Justice (whether deserved or not) for William Graham would not be meted out by the local or state courts. Six months after Camp Adams had burned and soon after the new all white company of enrollees had reopened the camp, William Graham and his family sought financial compensation for the medical bills and permanent injuries he had suffered due to the incident. Their claim would be filed with Congress and its report on the question would be printed in April 1937, nearly three years after the incident. Congress would ultimately authorize a settlement worth $3,500, “for the loss of his right eye and impaired hearing of his right ear, the result of having been struck in the right side of the face with a ball bat on May 27, 1934, in the hands of an enrollee of Camp Adams.”
Much of the details of the incident that can be found in the historical record thus come from the Congressional Report on the damages claim. Here we find the only eyewitness accounts of the incident, all of which come from the perspective of area white residents. The voices of the black CCC enrollees remain frustratingly silent in the congressional and larger historical record.
Even before the baseball team incident, local opposition to the camp had been noted in an inspection report filed by William P. Hannon on January 31st, 1934. The standard inspection form asked whether there had “been any trouble of any nature since camp was installed?” After consulting with the company officers, Hannon reported that one local resident had written “a letter complaining against Colored men being located here.” Otherwise, Hannon noted that there were “no complaints” about “the conduct of the men.” Additionally, the report noted that the “barracks are very clean and neat appearing - Fire extinguishers in all buildings and fire barrels and buckets inside and outside of all buildings.”
A second camp inspection report from September 1934 offers additional information, additional pieces to the puzzle. Interestingly Inspector T. J. McVey states that local opinion of the company’s conduct was “favorable.” And, as to whether there had been “any trouble of any nature since the camp was installed,” McVey stated that “2 [men had been] arrested and convicted of drunk and disorderly. One convicted of theft.” No mention was made of the arrest of the baseball team for an assault on a local resident. McVey did, however, note that there was a very high number of men (some seventy-two in total) that been dishonorably discharged since the camp’s inception — thirty-eight of which were due to “elopement” and seventeen for “refusal to work.” McVey noted that the company officers “can give no reason for [the] large number.” Whether any of the discharges were related to the baseball team’s difficulties is impossible to argue. The camp, according to McVey, had also recently been subjected to an unusual quarantine order, which barred contact between the camp and the local community. The quarantine ran from the 24th of August to the 5th of September 1934, three days before McVey arrived in camp for its inspection, and just a few weeks after the dismissal of the case against Wilkins Green and the failure of the grand jury to issue any indictments against the enrollees of Camp Adams. The quarantine, according to McVey’s report was issued due to the existence of one case of small pox, otherwise the “general health” of the enrollees had been “good,” with the men having gained an average of 12 pounds since their arrival.
Barracks fires were unusual. There is only one other such fire reported in Shawnee Forest during the whole history of the Three-Cs, and it occurred at the camp of another all-black unit, Co. 1520 in January 1934. One of their barracks had burnt, with no reported explanation. Though it is worth noting that the fire occurred relatively soon after what CCC officials termed a “riot.” In June of 1933, soon after their first arrival in the forest, camp official reorganized the company and assigned new squad leaders over the objections of the enrollees. Seventeen men, identified as the ring leaders were arrested at gun point and discharged from the CCC. Co. 1520, as far as the records indicate, never again was the source of controversy. The camp inspection report from September 1934, noted the “riot,” but concluded that the men’s morale was “good” and that there was currently no opposition to the camp in the local vicinity.
General opposition to bringing in outside labor, whether white or black, however was seen soon after the first announcements of the location of CCC camps in the Shawnee Forest region. In nearby Portsmouth, local charitable organizations that helped with county-wide relief efforts recommended that the reforestation and soil conservation projects proceed, but they objected to bringing in men from other regions of the state and paying them only $1 a day. Instead, they recommend that local unemployed men be hired to work in the camps and that they be paid $3 a day. This they said would help the local economy and community by removing residents from the local welfare rolls.
What we end up with then is a fragmentary historical record of newspaper reportage, records in the National Archives, and a Congressional report, all of which provides (in the case of the burning of CCC Camp Adams) a circumstantial case for racially motivated sabotage and arson. It appears that Army officials acted quickly to resolve a racially-charged situation that had tapped into local opposition to the Civilian Conservation Corps, but they did so in ways that may have reinforced racial prejudice in the region. While the quick decision to transfer the company was driven by the necessity of providing food and shelter to the men, the reconstitution of Co. 584 as a white unit, which was then sent back to Camp Adams, does legitimately raise some questions, which perhaps further research can answer.
In the meantime, we are reminded how often the historical record, particularly that regarding African Americans in Appalachia is frustratingly incomplete. However, knowing the racism of the day and age, it is not that far fetched to imagine that fighting words were exchanged between to the two baseball teams on the Sunday morning of May 27th, 1934, when they first passed each other on State Route 41 and that when they chanced to meet each other again that same afternoon, the men on the back of the trucks, white and black, took swings at each other, with only William Graham unfortunately getting hit.
The mayor, without sufficient evidence, then dismissed the case against Wilkins Green, but anger and opposition nevertheless boiled over when the grand jury failed to bring indictments. The camp was then quarantined. Whether done so on purely medical grounds or as a precautionary measure to limit local contact due to heightened racial tensions, the camp and its company of young black men had most definitely become the object of concern for local residents. It doesn’t involve too much imagination to conceive that when the local courts failed them, an area resident or group of residents decided to torch the camp in hopes of running off the unwanted camp of black forestry workers. This act of sabotage was then accomplished in the middle of the day, when only a handful of men were on camp duty, the bulk of the unit having left camp for their day’s work in the forest.
Whether the arsonist or arsonists lit only one barrack (or any at all) will remain conjecture, but the fire does appear to have raged first in one of the barracks, before it spread to the other buildings. Ultimately, whether it jumped from the first barrack by the assistance of the arsonist or arsonists, or by the wind, matters not. The end result was that the black company of CCC enrollees had been burned out.
Sources
“162 Arrive for New C.C.C. Camp - Negro Company Sent to Churn Creek Site From Camp Knox,” Portsmouth Times (15 November 1933). “African Americans in the Civilian Conservation Corps,” New Deal Network, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Web. http://newdeal.feri.org/aaccc/. Backs, Jean. "Unsung Heroes of the Tree Army," Ohio State Parks Vol. 14:1 (Spring/Summer 2008): 2-6. Cole, Olen, The African American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1999). Fechner, Robert to Robert J. Bulkley (4 June 1936), “African Americans in the CCC,” New Deal Network, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Web. http://newdeal.feri.org/aaccc/aaccc05.htm.
Fechner, Robert to Thomas L. Griffith (21 September 1935), ”CCC Negro Selection,” Box 700, General Correspondence of the Director, Record Group 35, NARAII, College Park, Maryland. “Fire Razes CCC Camp,” Steubenville Herald-Star (6 December 1934). “Flames Raze Camp Adams - 200 Colored Enrollees Sent to Fort Knox Within Seven Hours After Fire,” Portsmouth Times (7 December 1934) Gower, Calvin W. “The Struggle of Blacks for Leadership Positions in the Civilian Conservation Corps: 1933-1942,” The Journal of Negro History 61:2 (Apr., 1976): 123-135. “Camp Adams to be Opened with 24 Large Tents — Frame Barracks Saved from Fire to Become Mess Hall — Changes in Effect,” Portsmouth Times (31 March 1935). "Camp Report, Co. No. 584," Camp Adams, Stout, Ohio (31 January 1934), Division of Investigations, Camp Inspection Reports, 1933-1942, Box 164, Records of the Civil Conservation Corps, NARAII, College Park, Maryland. "Camp Report, Co. No. 584," Camp Adams, Stout, Ohio (8 September 1934), Division of Investigations, Camp Inspection Reports, 1933-1942, Box 164, Records of the Civil Conservation Corps, NARAII, College Park, Maryland. “Camp Report, Co. No. 584,” Fort Knox, Kentucky (30 March 1935), Division of Investigations, Camp Inspection Reports, 1933-1942, Box 164, Records of the Civil Conservation Corps, NARAII, College Park, Maryland. "Camp Report, Co. No. 584," Camp Adams, Stout, Ohio (18 May 1935), Division of Investigations, Camp Inspection Reports, 1933-1942, Box 164, Records of the Civil Conservation Corps, NARAII, College Park, Maryland. "Camp Report, Co. No. 3506," Camp Adams, Blue Creek, Ohio (9 July 1936), Division of Investigations, Camp Inspection Reports, 1933-1942, Box 164, Records of the Civil Conservation Corps, NARAII, College Park, Maryland. “CCC Force is to Move to Fort Knox After Fire in Adams County Camp,” Cincinnati Enquirer (7 December 1934). King, Charles C., ed., A Legacy of Stewardship: The Ohio Department of Natural Resources 1949-1989 (Columbus, 1990). “Forest Camp Under Guard - Seventeen Negro Members of Conservation Corps Arrested After Disturbance,” Massillon Evening Independent (17 July 1933). “Forest Workers Rebel, Are in Jail - Negroes in Shawnee Forest Camp Object to New Squad Leaders,” Zanesville Times Recorder (16 July 1933). Maher, Neil M. Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008). Medina, Daniel. “Civilian Conservation Corps, Racial Segregation, and the Building of the Angeles National Forest,” Departures, KCET (10 February 2014). Web. https://www.kcet.org/shows/departures/civilian-conservation-corps-racial-segregation-and-the-building-of-the-angeles “Name of Assailant Revealed By Negro Group Held in Jail,” Portsmouth Times (29 May 1934). Neatrour, Anna. “Segregated Camps for African Americans,” Roosevelt’s Tree Army: Civilian Conservation Corps. Digital Public Library of America. September 2015. http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/civilian-conservation-corps. Quigley, Barbara. “African Americans and the Civilian Conservation Corps,” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Winter 2005: 44-47. “Release Accused Enrollee - West Union Mayor Holds No Evidence Against Accused,” Portsmouth Times (1 June 1934). Salmond, John A. “The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Negro,” Journal of American History 52:1 (June 1965): 75-88. Salmond, John A. The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967). Sherraden, Michael W. “The Local Impact of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942,” The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 10:3 (September 1983). Smith, Langdon. “Democratizing Nature Through State Park Development,” Historical Geography: An Annual Journal of Research, Commentary and Reviews 41 (2013). Smith, Michael. “Blacks in the CCC: A Forest Army Post in Honor of Black History Month,” Forest Army: Remembering the Civilian Conservation Corps (23 February 2011). Web. http://forestarmy.blogspot.com/2011/02/blacks-in-ccc.html Speakman, Joseph M. “Into the Woods: The First Year of the Civilian Conservation Corps,” Prologue Magazine: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall 2006). “Use Guns to Halt Uprising in Camp - Civilian Negro Troops Voice Protest to Wage in Ohio; Arrest 17,” Akron Beacon Journal (17 July 1933). “William E. Graham — Report to Accompany H.R. 705,” Report No. 438, 75th Congress, First Session (29 April 1937).
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Capt. William McClain's Underground Steamboat: McClain v. Esham (1856) and the Escape of Joshua onboard the Steamer Bostona

2022-04-06T20:14:51+00:00

A long-overlooked Kentucky lawsuit, known as McClain v. Esham, dating to 1856, provides important insight into the Ohio River operations of what might best be described as an Underground Steamboat. In this case, the Steamer Bostona, owned and captained by William McClain, gave passage to an enslaved man named Joshua who had "embarked upon the boat at Vanceburg, in Lewis county," in company with two white men, and who had then "proceeded with them to Portsmouth, Ohio, and had not returned or been seen since."

Eliza Esham of Nicholas County, Kentucky claimed Joshua as her property and sued Capt. McClain, seeking damages. During a jury trial, witness testimony established that Joshua "at the time [had] no written pass or authority from his mistress ... and that the boy had been accustomed, without restriction of his owner, to hire himself out to whom and whenever he pleased."
Joshua was a skilled carpenter, whose value was set at $1,500 by the jury, citing "his age, habits, vocation, health and character for subordination and obedience, as well as his locality, and the chances or inducements for escape from his owner." The court found "that the escape of a slave to Ohio, was equivalent to a total loss to the owner." And, thus, in finding Captain McClain responsible for the loss of her slave property, the jury awarded $1,500 in damages to Esham.
The Bostona, built in 1854, operated as part of the Cincinnati, Maysville, and Portsmouth Packet Company, which carried the U.S. Mail, leaving Portsmouth three days a week, "touching at all way points." The ship's captain, William McClain was born near Wheeling, Virginia, on 25 December 1809 and he died at Portsmouth on 10 September 1867, with his final resting place in Greenlawn Cemetery.
After working as a pilot and then a steamboat captain, McClain built his first steamer, the Lady Washington, in 1832, placing it in the Cincinnati and Wheeling trade. William and his wife, Sara Thompson McClain, left Wheeling in 1837 and settled on a farm in Clermont county, Ohio. The couple would later relocate to Portsmouth in 1855, where Sara McClain's sister, Amanda Pursell lived.
Over his forty-year career, Captain McClain navigated the waters of the Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers, and was "well known from Pittsburg to New Orleans." Much of his boating career, however, was focused on the waters between Portsmouth and Cincinnati, which were run by his beloved Bostona.
One biographer noted that McClain "was a man of great caution, and would never incur unnecessary risks. He gave his personal attention to the minute details of the management of his boat, and had special care not only for the safety, but also for the comfort of his passengers. .... He was a man of great force of character, possessed an iron will, was positive and decided in his opinion, and plain and outspoken in his sentiments."
One of Capt. William McClain's decided opinions appears to have involved the injustices of slavery and the moral duty to lend a helping hand to the freedom seeker who needed safe passage on the Ohio River.
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CCC Cabin Museum and the Shawnee State Park Nature Center

2012-12-14T14:53:30+00:00

The Shawnee State Park Nature Center, which is located just below the Turkey Creek Lake Dam, carries on the traditions of the original Roosevelt Game Preserve, from which the Park was first carved in the 1930s. Visitors can see live specimens of salamanders, frogs, turtles, snakes, and other critters that make their homes in the Shawnee State Forest Region.

The distinctive A-frame construction of the Nature Center dates to circa 1969, when it was built for a privately owned cabin rental complex, known as the High Meadow, which was briefly located on the current site of the Shawnee Park Lodge.
The High Meadow A-Frames cost $75 a week to rent, and included a canoe, which was tied up on the shore of the then new Turkey Creek Lake. After the State of Ohio purchased the location, the cabin was relocated next to the Turkey Creek Lake Spillway and converted into a Nature Center.
In 2007, Shawnee State Park relocated and restored a log cabin, which had been originally constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s. The cabin had been built as part of CCC Camp Shawnee No. 1. and was located near Pond Lick Lake in the Shawnee State Forest.
CCC work within the forest included the removal of deadened American Chestnut, which had succumbed to an Asian blight in the 1920s. Using this salvaged timber, the CCC built a number of log structures, such as this cabin, which is a perfect example of what scholars have called CCC "parkitecture," the distinctive rustic construction style used in CCC park improvements across the nation.
Today, it serves as an interpretive center on the history of the park and forest. Visitors can learn how the Shawnee once called these hills home, when the game was thick and Europeans were few and far between. Following American settlement, which led to deforestation and the extirpation of buffalo, deer, and black bear, a Conservation Movement would give birth to Ohio's Roosevelt Game Preserve and Shawnee State Forest in the 1920s. And, from these beginnings, with the help of Franklin D. Roosevelt's CCC, would develop what is today Shawnee State Park.
Today the Nature Center and CCC Cabin Museum are popular attractions with area residents and visitors from throughout the tri-state region of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Here, park visitors can learn about native and invasive plant and animal species, which are found within the park and larger Shawnee State Forest. The Center and the Park Naturalist, along with numerous volunteers, carry on the tradition of free educational nature programing, which dates back to the Park’s origins in the Roosevelt Game Preserve, which kept a “zoo” of forest animals in the 1920s and 30s.
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CCC Camp Bear Creek

2013-05-21T21:10:16+00:00

Camp Bear Creek was one of the seven Civilian Conservation Corps camps located in the Shawnee State Forest, beginning in 1933. The camp, with its barracks, officers quarters, and out buildings is now the grounds of the popular Horse Camp, where horse enthusiasts camp out and ride the Forest's many bridle trails.
The enrollees of this camp built the impressive Bear Lake Dam, which impounded the waters of Bear Creek. They cut new forest roads through the area, helping build Roads 3, 4, and 6, thereby allowing motorized vehicle access to the new Forest Experiment Station, which CCC labor built at the Mouth of Snake Hollow.
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CCC Camp Scioto & McBride Lake

2013-05-21T21:07:26+00:00

In the mid-1930s, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees from nearby Camp Scioto built McBride Lake in the headwaters of Pond Run, a small tributary of the Ohio River.
One of six lakes originally built with CCC labor, McBride is one of the smaller reservoirs, yet one whose curved spillway illustrates the fine stone work of the CCC.
Floyd Chapman, a Field Ecologist with the Ohio Division of Conservation who studied the work of the CCC in southern Ohio, noted that these "lakes were built primarily to provide water for CCC Camps, but are being used at present [in 1938] for public recreation, including fishing, boating and swimming. Such lakes are likewise valuable to wildlife, promote better plant growth, and aid in flood control."
Camp Scioto was the home of Company 552 of the CCC and its work and camp life is well documented thanks to the work of Rudy Yukich, a member of the unit, who kept a photo album of his days in Shawnee Forest. The CC Boys of Company 552 built the reservoir and worked on the construction of Forest Road Nos. 2 and 5. It was enrollees from Camp Scioto that built the Pond Run Fire Tower, which long stood above the lake, offering a dramatic view of the forest and the Ohio River.
Sources:
Floyd Barton Chapman, "The Development and Utilization of the Wildlife Resources of Unglaciated Ohio," (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1938).
Rudy Yukich Collection, Shawnee Digital History Lab, Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio.
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CCC Co. 1520 & Camp Shawnee No. 2

2013-05-21T21:04:34+00:00

CCC Camp Shawnee No. 2 was home to one of the four segregated, all black companies of Civilian Conservation Corps units, which helped to construct the infrastructure of the modern-day Shawnee State Forest.
Originally occupied on 18 June 1933, Co. 1520 included 200 African American enrollees, which were drawn from cities across Ohio. The army commander and his lieutenants were augmented by locally hired men (both black and white) from nearby Portsmouth, Ohio. Frank and Neal Hairston, for example served as “local experienced men,” providing supervision and technical expertise to the unit. Their projects included road construction, seed collection for reforestation efforts, and fire hazard forest improvement, which included the removal of blighted American Chestnut trees.
Soon after the company arrived in Shawnee and began their work, the camp was the scene of what CCC officials described as a "riot," when thirty of the men refused to work. Ultimately, the disgruntled men were discharged and order restored to the camp. By the fall of 1934, morale had improved. A camp inspection report noted the enrollees appeared “to be satisfied with conditions. As a whole they have no complaints to offer. All say they like the life and are satisfied.” In gauging the local public opinion of the enrollees's conduct,” the government inspector concluded it to be “very favorable.”
Additionally, the report noted that "religious services are held at this camp on Thursday evenings, by local colored clergymen. Catholics are transported to Portsmouth by truck on Sundays. …. 85% of the men attend services.” And, notably, the average weight gain of its enrollees was reported to be 20 pounds, significantly higher than the national average of 11.5 pounds.
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CCC Co. 1545 & Camp Roosevelt

2013-05-20T18:08:53+00:00

On May 20th, 1935, T. J. McVey walked the grounds of CCC Camp Roosevelt on the banks of Turkey Creek in Ohio's Shawnee State Forest. McVey worked for the Inspections Division of the CCC and his "Camp Report," can be found in the National Archives in Maryland.
The barracks of Camp Roosevelt were once located in the open field, across from the entrance of Boy Scout Camp Oyo. Little remains of the old CCC camp, except a stone memorial structure, built by the CCC to house the bronze dedication plate for the original Roosevelt Game Preserve, the precursor of Shawnee State Park. Today the plate is on display in a new stone memorial, located near the Roosevelt Shelter House and the Shawnee State Park Campgrounds.
Camp Roosevelt was the home of Company 1545, a special and extremely rare, segregated, all-black Civilian Conservation Corps unit of enrollees. Their historical significance should be especially noted as the unit, some 220 enrollees, was also made up of all World War I veterans. During the life of this Depression Era conservation jobs program (part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal), over 3 million men enrolled in the CCC, including some 250,000 African-Americans, who were placed in one of the 150 segregated, all-black companies. Camp Roosevelt was one of four segregated camps in the Shawnee Forest, which at one time or another in the 1930s had a total of seven camps.
At the time of McVey’s inspection in 1935, Otto C. Schmidt served as company commander, while C. A. Hermann is listed as "Project Supervisor." The Camp Doctor, L .R. Markey, reported that the "general health of the men has been good, average gain in weight per man has been 6 to 7 lbs." It appears the men of Company 1545 were hungry when they enlisted and were well fed while they worked on constructing the Roosevelt Lake Spillway Bridge and Dam.
As for camp recreational activities, McVey listed: Radio, piano, pool tables, checkers, dominoes, playing cards, chess, boxing gloves, baseball, basketball, volleyball, softball, and horse shoes. Additionally, "enrollees are taken to Portsmouth twice weekly for Recreation."
McVey claimed that "50% of the company attend religious services," which “are held at camp every Sunday morning by Assistant educational advisor [Oscar Rhine] who is an ordained minister.” “Catholics,” he reported, “are transported to Portsmouth by truck where they can attend church services." Camp officers apparently monitored enrollee mail, as McVey noted, "No communistic literature has been received at this camp."
McVey recorded that there were "no bed bugs or other vermin at this camp" and the morale of "the men while in the field" was good. "The enrollees all seem to be satisfied. No complaints." Camp Roosevelt passed McVey’s inspection and received a rating of "Excellent."
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Columbus & the Santa Maria Ship/Museum

2013-06-03T06:36:50+00:00

Billed as "the world's most authentic, museum-quality representation of Christopher Columbus' flagship," the Santa Maria Ship/Museum has been anchored to the banks of the Scioto River in the heart of Ohio's state capital since 1992. Built to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the city's namesake's famous voyage, the Santa Maria is a clear reminder that the history of the city and larger Scioto Valley is tied to the age of exploration and conquest. The 1992 Commemoration was not without its critics and controversy. Quincentennial Jubilee Commission officials hosted President George H. W. Bush and marked the anniversary with a $95 million international floral and garden festival, awkwardly named AmeriFlora '92. "We Americans celebrate discovery because we're never satisfied," explained the President, "because we are ever romancing the next horizon. That is why ... a full-size replica of the Santa Maria graces the Scioto River. Here in the largest city in the world bearing the explorer's name," he continued, "we honor Columbus for the same reason as people in Peoria or Prague. We believe that the individual can make a difference and that human dignity can, indeed, change the world. Most of all," Bush intoned, "we know that dignity stems from values like hard work and self-reliance and faith. In 1492, those values sustained Columbus' voyage. In 1992, they must sustain our voyage to do right and thus achieve good." The man whom President Bush cited as an example of human dignity, Christopher Columbus, others saw as the embodiment of all the sins of European colonial oppression. When the new Santa Maria was officially dedicated and opened to visitors, another crowd of more than a hundred gathered in a nearby park and held their own memorial service, recalling the genocide that had flowed in the wake of Columbus' voyage. Today, the Columbus Quincentennial has come and gone, but visitors to the Ship/Museum can look up river from her deck and view the former site of Saltlick Town, the Native American village that was destroyed by Virginians during Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. Sources: George H. W. Bush, "Remarks at the Opening Ceremony of the AmeriFlora '92 Exposition in Columbus, Ohio" (1992-04-20), Public Papers, George Bush Presidential Library . Paul C. Nutt, "AmeriFlora '92" in Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps That Lead to Debacles (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002). Anne Raver, "Ameriflora: An Old Hybrid Struggles," New York Times (6 August 1992), p. C1. santamaria.org Andrew C. Theokas, Grounds for Review: The Garden Festival in Urban Planning and Design (Liverpool University Press, 2004).
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Concord Presbyterian Church & the Rev. James H. Dickey

2013-06-20T14:10:43+00:00

Ross County's Concord Presbyterian Church was home to a number of influential abolitionist activists and conductors on the Underground Railroad. Concord's congregation has its roots in nearby South Salem's Buckskin Presbyterian Church. In 1804, the new congregation established its meeting place on a hillside near the small village of Lattaville. In 1822, the original log structure was replaced with one built of red brick, now painted in classic white.
Here, in the loft of this church, fugitive slaves sought refuge on their way north to freedom in Canada. The Concord Church's second pastor, the Rev. James H. Dickey arrived in 1810 and his two decades of service in this pulpit firmly established Concord as an abolitionist stronghold and made it a station on the emerging Underground Railroad of Ohio's Scioto Valley.
Dickey first came to the area in August of 1810 as a missionary of Kentucky's West Lexington Presbytery, which had just granted the young man a ministerial license. Dickey had been a student of Barton Stone, an antislavery Presbyterian who is most remembered for hosting Kentucky's Cane Ridge Revival in the summer of 1801. Here in Ohio, the Presbyterians who had settled the headwaters Herrod's Run and Buckskin and Indian creeks, approved of Dickey and invited him to settle with them. At first, they would share his ministerial duties among three churches - Pisgah, Buckskin, and Concord, but it was to Concord that he served the longest.
Before leaving Kentucky in 1811, Dickey married into the emerging abolitionist network of Presbyterian families in south-central Ohio. He took Mary Depew of Paris, Kentucky, as his wife. The Depews were slaveowners and her dowry included five souls, which the newly weds decided to free and carry with them to Ohio. The Rev. Samuel Crothers of nearby Greenfield, Highland County, was a brother-in-law to the Dickeys. Crothers had also married a Depew, a sister of Mary.
As the Underground Railroad developed in the Scioto Valley it would run along the familial and social networks of antislavery evangelical southerners, men and women who (like the runaways they assisted) had fled across the Ohio River to escape what the oppression and moral corruption of the southern, slave states.
In April 1822, Rev. Dickey and the Concord church hosted the inaugural meeting of the Chillicothe Presbytery, which served the Ohio counties of Ross, Fayette, Highland, Pike, Adams, Brown and the eastern parts of Clermont and Clinton. The new presbytery helped organize south-central Ohio's more radical anti-slavery Presbyterians. The Chillicothe Presbytery, now led by men like John Rankin, James Gilliland, William Williamson, Dyer Burgess, Samuel Crothers, and James H. Dickey, would emerge as one of the nation's most vocal and radical antislavery church organizations.
Dickey would serve as the first Corresponding Secretary of the Abolition Society of Paint Valley, which he helped organize in 1833. Dickey would give up his position at Concord and resettle further west in Illinois in 1837. By then the Rev. William Gage had already been installed as their next minister.
Gage, a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Andover Theological Seminary, shared Dickey's antislavery faith. He too was a dedicated abolitionist, who attended the business of the Paint Valley society and helped fugitive slaves along the route of the Underground Railroad.
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Copperhead Fire Tower

2013-05-29T22:38:14+00:00

In 1924, after purchasing the first lands for the creation of the Shawnee State Forest, the Division of Forestry constructed three fire towers in the region to help protect the state's newly acquired resources.
Today, at the metal structure's base, on a bulletin board of sorts, one finds a brief history of fire towers and fire fighting, which the Division of Forestry has mounted behind a sheet of plexiglass.
"Wildfire detection from aircraft began in the 1940s, and Ohio's fire towers were phased out until the closure of the last tower in 1978. Today, civilians report the majority of wildfires to state and local authorities. While in service, Ohio's fire towers were staffed by lookouts, and equipped with binoculars, maps, radio, telephone, and an alidade - a device use to pinpoint the location of a wildfire."
According to the records of the Division of Forestry, Copperhead Fire Tower was the first such tower built in all of Ohio and it is the only remaining tower in the forest. Recently restored, visitors, at their own risk, may climb to the top and take in the dramatic 360-degree view from high above the forest.
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Dr. Chaboudy and the Origins of the Portsmouth Flood Wall Murals

2013-06-28T13:39:30+00:00

Visit the Scioto County Welcome Center and view Robert Dafford's large canvas portrait of Ava and Louis Chaboudy. Dr. Louis Chaboudy is remembered as "the person who originated the idea of having murals painted on the Portsmouth floodwall." Bob Morton of Portsmouth Murals, Inc., authored the first history of the murals and according to his telling, "It all began with a Triple A motorcoach tour to the Wheeling, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio, area in February, 1992. AAA escort Ava Chaboudy had her husband, Dr. Louis Chaboudy, on the tour with her. When the group toured the murals in Steubenville Dr. Chaboudy recalls remarking to Ava, "The floodwall in Portsmouth would be a good place for murals and they would fix something that has been an eyesore for over 50 years."
Bob Morton, who served as the president of the AAA's South-Central Ohio Club, at the time, was also there at the inception. In May of 1992, Dr. Chaboudy returned to Steubenville with Morton and George Clayton, a prominent Portsmouth businessman. Chaboudy and Clayton were members of the Club's Board of Trustees and, along with Morton, the three men were attending the Club's Annual Meeting. Upon their return to Portsmouth, they met with Mayor Franklin T. Gerlach, who embraced the idea. Morton and the AAA then organized a group tour of Steubenville's mural project. Among the party, according to Bob Morton's recollection, were "Mayor Gerlach, City Council President Ann Sydnor, Dr. and Ava Chaboudy, George Clayton, Leo Blackburn, Carl Ackerman, Doug Peterseim (the AAA employee who drove the AAA van) and myself [Bob Morton]."
Morton's list highlights the important role Carl Ackerman, a local photo collector, would play in the development of the murals and their illustration of Portsmouth history. Robert Dafford, who was hired to paint Portsmouth's floodwall murals, would rely heavily upon Ackerman's collection to depict the city's history. During the tour group's drive back to Portsmouth, Morton and other AAA officials agreed to procure club funds to hire Louise Snider of Steubenville as a consultant to what would become Portsmouth Murals, Inc. Snider, the Executive Director of the Steubenville Downtown Business Association, had led the Portsmouth AAA group on their recent tour of Steubenville's murals. It was Snider's recommendation of Robert Dafford that led to his choice as the Portsmouth project's muralist.
Snider discovered Dafford's work in Chemainus, a small town on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. In May 1994, the Smithsonian Magazine ran Stanley Meisler's article, "Take a look at a town that wouldn't lie down and die," which highlighted the Chemainus's public mural project. Meisler's story of a small Canadian town, which had fallen on hard times following the closure of its largest mill, resonated with residents of Steubenville and Portsmouth, Ohio.
"Like mist over the nearby bay, a cold gloom hovered over the little Vancouver Island town of Chemainus as it faced the 1980s. The waterfront sawmill, mainstay for more than a century, was losing millions of dollars a year. Then the government of British Columbia agreed to subsidize a downtown revitalization program that would spruce up the shops on Willow Street with planters, benches and parking space. But supermarkets were sprouting in bigger towns just a few miles down the Trans-Canada Highway. Who would shop in tiny Chemainus, even a spruced-up Chemainus? 'People were wondering whether the town was going to die or not,' says Rodney Moore, a retired meal shop owner. The death knell seemed sure in 1983 when the mill shut down."
"Yet today," as Meisler noted, "Canada's Chemainus is a thriving town, hued in sprightly pastels, a kind of gingerbread Carmel of the North that attracts 400,000 tourists a year, most making a detour to take in 32 murals now adorning the sides of buildings and standing walls in a festival of color. The population has swelled to almost 4,000. It is a spanking new magnet for young Canadians looking to put down roots in a town with a future and for older Canadians bent on retiring to a land of tranquillity." The supporters of the Portsmouth project believed a similar project, on an even larger scale, would have a similar impact here in southern Ohio.
In late February 1993, Dafford visited Portsmouth and presented his vision for the first mural. "It was a scene of Portsmouth as it looked in 1903 taken from four photographs in the Carl Ackerman collection and would consist of four panels, each 40 feet by 20 feet." According to Bob Morton, the unveiling was hosted at the former Ramada Inn (now Holiday Inn) on Second Street, with a wine and cheese reception, which in his words, "was not a resounding success with 34 people in attendance but the local media gave it good publicity."
The informal committee moved ahead with their work and created Portsmouth Murals Inc. in April 1993. The officers were Dr. Louis Chaboudy, President, George Clayton, First Vice-President, Bob Morton, Second Vice-President, Ava Chaboudy, Secretary, and James D. Kricker, Treasurer. The committee elected a board of trustees, including Franklin Gerlach, Ann Sydnor, Leo Blackburn, Don Gordley, Mary Hall, Imogene Howland, Carl Ackerman, Chris Lute, Phil Jackson, Tom Stead, Jan Morton, E.L. Glockner, Kay Reynolds, Jeanne Sheets, Margaret Clyaton, and Jeff Albrect. Imogene Howland was chosen as the chair of the Art Committee, which worked with Dafford and Carl Ackerman to develop the mural subjects.
With some $20,000 raised from private sources, representatives of the project, including Dr. Chaboudy, George Clayton, Imogene Howland, and Bob Morton approached the Honorable Vern Riffe, then Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, about their project. "Speaker Riffe was acquainted with the Steubenville success, knew Mrs. Snider and had helped their project with some State funding."
According to Morton's telling, "He was impressed with our start on the project and agreed to help the mural committee. And help he did in a big way!" With some state money promised, a $5,000 grant from the Scioto County Area Foundation, and major private donations, including $10,000 from Andy and Ebby Glockner, soon followed and the project began to take off. The central role of Ava and Louis Chaboudy in the creation of the Portsmouth floodwall murals is rightly highlighted in Dafford's portrait. This couple's successful vision, it should be noted, was made possible thanks to more than just state grant money and a handful of substantial private donations. The hundreds of supporters, who contributed time and money to the project, those businesses who donated food and lodging to Dafford and his assistants, and those who bought the popular mural calendars deserve their proper credit.
The Scioto County Welcome Center, which displays the Chaboudy portrait, also includes exhibits illustrating the area's rich industrial history, along with memorabilia associated with Branch Rickey and Roy Rogers, two of the county's more noteworthy natives. The Welcome Center is housed in a thoroughly remodeled retail establishment, once owned by George Clayton, who played a critical role in the earliest days of the mural project.
In 2006, thanks to a $400,000 federal grant from the United States Department of Agriculture, the Welcome Center was dedicated by Rob Portman, who had secured the funds while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Today, the exterior walls of the Welcome Center have been transformed into an extension of the floodwall murals. Here Dafford has completed some of his most recent Portsmouth works, including depictions of the old Norfolk & Western Railroad Station and the historic Portsmouth Public Library's stain-glass, domed lobby.
Sources
Robert L. Morton, “Portsmouth Murals - A Tourist Attraction - How It All Began - Part One,” AAA Today Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter 1996): 4-7.
Robert L. Morton, “The Floodwall Murals: How it All Began - Part Two,” AAA Today Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer 1996): 4-7.
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Dr. James F. Scott, the First Elected Black County Coroner in the United States

2019-02-15T20:28:53+00:00

James Forrest Scott was born in Porter, Ohio located in Gallia County, on 29 July 1903. He graduated from Bidwell Porter High School in 1921. Despite being the only black member of his class, he was elected class orator by his peers. An eighteen-year old J. F. Scott entered the Ohio State University College of Education in the fall of 1921 with the idea of becoming a teacher. He later changed career goals and switched to Pre-Med in 1922. In 1925 he was admitted to the Ohio State University Medical School as the only black member of his class. Dr. Scott worked briefly at St. Francis Children's and University Hospitals in Columbus, Ohio.
Dr. Scott learned from relatives that the City of Portsmouth, Ohio, despite having a population of approximately 48,000 citizens, did not have a single black doctor. Seeing this as an excellent opportunity to begin a private practice, Dr. Scott and family came to Portsmouth in 1930. He began practicing from a four room cottage at 1207 12th Street. Later that year he moved his office and home to 1209 12th Street. As both the size of his family and the number of his patients grew, Dr. Scott found it necessary to relocate to a larger home at 1013 12th Street in 1936. This address had previously been the residence and office of Dr. W. H. Lowry, a dentist and professional mentor of Dr. Scott.
During the early 1930s Dr. Scott's fees consisted of $2.00 for an office visit, $3.00 for a house call during the day, and $5.00 for a house call during the night. His fees, however, were not always paid in cash. It was not uncommon that grateful but poor patients would settle their obligations to Dr. Scott with chickens, turkeys, hogs and garden produce. When the 1937 flood hit the Portsmouth area, Dr. Scott, as well as other area doctors, found it sometimes necessary to visit patients marooned by the high water in a boat. Because of his constant activity during the flood, Dr. Scott contacted a toxic infection and was hospitalized. It nearly cost him his life.
Fortunately, he recovered and was able to continue his practice. During World War II, Dr. Scott lost the use of his automobile because of the unavailability of spare parts. Undeterred by this hardship, Dr. Scott continued to serve his patients faithfully, often having to walk long distances to administer a patient too ill to visit his office. After the war ended, Dr. Scott was privileged to purchase one of the first new cars made available to Portsmouth from the Glockner Chevrolet Company.
Dr. Scott was often forced to administer to his patients at their homes, this in part was because Mercy Hospital was totally segregated and the old Portsmouth General Hospital had only two private rooms on the first floor that were made available to black patients. During his career as a General Practitioner, Dr. Scott delivered in excess of 2,000 babies, included among this number are Kathy Battle, Al Oliver, and Larry Hisle. The one childbirth that stands out in the memory of Dr. Scott is that of Mary Jo Ferguson. She was a premature baby that Dr. Scott delivered at home. Her birth weight was only one pound fifteen ounces! Dr. Scott would extract mother's milk from the mother and feed the infant with a medicine dropper. He devised a home-made incubator for the infant using hot water bottles.
In 1954, Dr. Scott was elected Scioto County Coroner. This feat ranked him as the first elected Black coroner in the United States. He served as coroner until 1 January 1975. To date, he still holds the record for longest service as a Scioto County Coroner. During this 20 year tenure circumstances twice made it necessary for Dr. Scott to assume the Office of Sheriff of Scioto County.
Dr. Scott served as Medical Director of the Portsmouth City Health Department for ten years. He is a past President of the Scioto County Crime Clinic. He has served as an Examiner for the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation and for the Metropolitan Insurance Company. Through his position as Medical Director of the Portsmouth City Health Department, Dr. Scott initiated in 1973 a free clinic examination for Sickle Cell Anemia at the Farley Square Community Center. People came from throughout Scioto, Lawrence, and Pike Counties for an examination and the program received exposure on local television. Dr. Scott was a member of the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners, a member of the American Medical Association, a member of the Ohio State University 50 Year Club, and was a Past Master of Trinity Lodge #9 P.H. F&AM.
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Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool: "A Place in the Sun for Everyone”

2018-07-21T13:35:52+00:00

Portsmouth, Ohio’s only city-owned, public pool was built to memorialize the drowning death of fourteen-year-old resident Eugene McKinley, the son of George and Ruth McKinley, who lived at 1212-E Farley Square.

On Friday, June 9th, 1961, McKinley and a group of other African American school boys went swimming in a flooded sand and gravel pit that had recently been dug in the bottoms of the Scioto River. It was the last day of school and the students were ready to kickoff their summer with a swim. In their coverage, the Daily Times reported the drowning as follows:
"Arriving at the pit, the boys, who could swim, jumped in and told Eugene to stay near the bank, where the water was shallow. The boys discovered an underwater shelf leading out into the water. The companions said Eugene apparently wanting to show them he wasn’t afraid, started walking out on the shelf. The boys said Eugene, who was 6 feet tall, told them he was going to walk to the other side. About halfway out the shelf ended and Eugene stepped off into water over his head.
"As the first group started to swim, another group arrived and stood watching. As the McKinley boy first went under, two of these boys, Terry Woods, 14, of 1314 Findlay Street, and Ronnie Pritchard, 16, of Ironton, Ohio, shed their clothing and jumped in to give aid. The Woods boy swam to the victim. Eugene grabbed the smaller boy around the neck and pulled him under. The Woods boy said he managed to break the hold and swim away. The victim then grabbed the Pritchard youth and they went under the surface."
After Pritchard escaped, one last rescue attempt was made: "Other boys on the bank found a wire and tried to throw one end to the drowning boy. The attempt failed and Eugene disappeared below the surface. As he went under the group scattered in an attempt to summon aid. One of the boys ran south to an area where a bulldozer was operating while others ran over the levee to call firemen and police."
At the time of McKinley’s death — the summer of 1961 — Jim Crow, the system of laws and regulations that segregated American communities along racial lines and protected white supremacy and the white power structure, was in the process of being dismantled thanks to the hard work and sacrifices of the men, women, and children of the Civil Rights Movement. Following the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, Portsmouth’s schools would eventually become fully integrated. Following the Supreme Court decision, African-American students would be enrolled in Lincoln Elementary and in 1965, the formerly segregated Washington Elementary would be closed and its students integrated into the city's other schools. Portsmouth’s Jim Crow was never as harsh and all encompassing as in many southern communities, yet life in the city was certainly segregated and racial tensions did occasionally run high.
In 1923, Portsmouth made national news when its police shut down a KKK parade, arresting over 240 participants. By the early 1960s, Portsmouth was actually ahead of the curve in some areas of race relations, particularly when it came to law enforcement and public health. Ted Wilburn served as the city’s first African-American Police Chief and James Forrest Scott, MD, had the honor of being not only Scioto County’s, but also the nation’s first popularly elected African American county coroner. In June of 1961, it was Dr. Scott who ruled Eugene McKinley’s cause of death to be “accidental drowning.” Yet, for all of the progress Chief Wilburn and Dr. Scott represented, white residents of Portsmouth, as in hundreds of other cities across the nation, North and South, still maintained Jim Crow at their swimming facilities.
The day Eugene McKinley drowned, the city’s only swimming pool blocked blacks from admission. His white classmates swam at the Terrace Club’s pool in the East End, at what is now remembered more commonly, as “Dreamland Pool.” Eugene McKinley’s black classmates swam (if they swam at all) in rivers and other dangerous pools of water such as that which took McKinley’s life in the Summer of 1961. Residents, white and black, immediately recognized the hand of Jim Crow in McKinley's death. Yet, rather than integrate the Terrace Club, city residents of both races, joined together to build a new pool, one that would be "open to all.” “A place in the sun for everyone” is how it was first promoted. Portsmouth, it was hoped, had a large enough population to have two swimming pools and enlightened enough to support a new integrated one.
The pool’s location, however, was telling. Located on the North End of Findley Street, the pool would be constructed in the city’s historic African American neighborhood. Within a month of McKinley’s death, blacks and whites had established a non-profit, the Community Recreational Society (CRS), and within a year, they had secured pledges of tens of thousands of dollars. Orville Ferguson, Sr., led the efforts, securing the assistance of his employer, Roy McGovney. A new city water main was run to supply the facilities; the pool was dug and McGovney poured the concrete, but construction faltered in 1964, when the CRS board found their goal of three hundred family memberships had come up short and they could not collect all of the money that had been originally pledged.
In Portsmouth, like with the rest of the nation, the year 1964 was a turning point in the history of racial segregation. The Civil Right’s Movement had picked up momentum and direct actions aimed at integrating white-only public accommodations and places of amusement, such as swimming pools, had spread across the nation. In June of 1964, a "Dive-In" at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida, where protestors were pulled from the motel's swimming pool and beaten by police, captured the nation's attention. In response to the protests, turmoil, and media pressure Congress finally passed the Civil Rights Act and President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law on July 2nd, 1964.
Discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was now banned by federal law. It specifically outlawed racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. Private clubs, however, were exempted and it was unclear whether or not the federal law applied to the Terrace Club, which at the time was owned and operated as a private club. Since the late nineteenth-century, a similar “private club” exemption had existed in the Ohio Revised Code. Thus, despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, segregation of many American swimming pools — including the Terrace Club — continued in the summer of 1964, just as it had before. The fight to end Jim Crow in Portsmouth was not yet won. In hindsight, direct, non-violent actions — what had become known as wade-ins and sit-ins — was what was needed to compel Portsmouth's white leaders to once and for all end Jim Crow in the city.
Portsmouth's local branch of the NAACP would play a key role in planning the demonstration that would ultimately force the management of the Terrace Club to integrate their facilities. On 17 July 1964, a group of protestors, including the local NAACP President, Charles Stanley Smith, Jr., Curt Gentry, Roy Burns, Jesse Baggette, and two juveniles, whose names were withheld from the press, carried out a "wade-in," hoping over the entrance turnstiles and jumping into the pool. Pool management called in the police and pressed trespassing charges, refusing the NAACP's demands that they immediately integrate their facilities. Ultimately, the Terrace Club would withdraw their demand for prosecution of the protestors and would re-open the pool the following summer, in 1965, as an integrated facility, re-christening it, Dreamland Pool.
The integration of the Terrace Club appears to have negatively impacted the private fundraising efforts for the construction of the Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool. In 1966, a year after Dreamland’s desegregation, Orville Ferguson, Sr., the President of the Community Recreation Society, told Portsmouth City Council, “We’d been promised the total amount to complete the swimming pool, but the pledges didn’t come in.” The Society had already spent $36,000 on its construction, and Ferguson estimated that $25,000 was needed to “complete the facility.” Ferguson proposed that the City take over the project and complete the construction. City Manager Franklin T. Gerlach supported the acquisition. When done, the total cost of construction would come to $61,000.
The Portsmouth Daily Times ran an editorial in support of the city takeover: “The plan to put it in condition for swimming appears worthy of consideration. …. All heads were in agreement at the beginning that the pool should be built. That it was abandoned before completion was unfortunate. But there is no reason why it should remain abandoned. It would behoove all persons concerned to lend every assistance to any workable plan to complete the swimming pool so it can be used.” City Council agreed and approved the acquisition, funding the completion through the sale of bonds.
With public funding and management secured, the Eugene McKinley Memorial Pool would open on 17 June 1967. The Portsmouth Daily Times reported that Mayor Merle Odle "cut the ribbon on the facility ... with the temperature standing at 90 shadeless degrees." A crowd of 150 people participated in the "poolside ceremonies." Orville Ferguson spoke, explaining that the Community Recreation Society, Inc., "which planned the pool as a memorial to Eugene McKinley, who drowned while swimming in an excavation pit along the Scioto River." He "recognized individuals who played a role in making the facility a reality. Ferguson pointed to Amos White, secretary of the group, Chief of Police Ted Wilburn, Robert Newman, Eunice Sanders, and Roy McGovney."
When City Manager Huxley Kennedy addressed the crowd, he said the pool "is a good example of what can be accomplished if the community and the city are willing to work together." In the end, the pool cost $35,000 to complete. And, City Council would approve an additional $19,000 that was used to "finance the purchase, renovation, and sodding of an adjoining .29 acres to be used for a lounging area."
By the time Dreamland closed in the 1990s, hundreds of backyard pools had been built in and around Portsmouth. This was a national trend. In 1950, only 2,500 American families owned in-ground pools as compared to 4 million by 1999.
Today, McKinley Pool continues to be operated by the City of Portsmouth, as a “place in the sun for everyone” and as a memorial to a fourteen year old boy who lost his life due to Jim Crow. The pool serves today as a tribute to those members of the community who stood up for justice and equality, those residents, white and black, who helped bring segregation to its end in the city.
Sources
Niraj Chokshi, "Racism at American Pools Isn’t New: A Look at a Long History," New York Times (1 August 2018).
Andrew Feight, “Interview with Orville 'Butch' Ferguson," Stories of Life and Labor: Oral Histories from Portsmouth, Ohio (17 July 2017), Center for Public History Archives, Clark Memorial Library, Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio.
"16 Rabbis Arrested as Pool Dive‐In Sets Off St. Augustine Rights Clash," New York Times (19 June 1964).
“Deep Pool Takes Life of Student. Companions Fail In Effort to Rescue Eugene McKinley,” Portsmouth Daily Times (10 June 1961).
“New Swimming Pool Proposed.. $70,000 Drive Launched,” Portsmouth Daily Times (26 February 1962).
“Four Freed on Bond after Pool Entry. Negroes Charged with Trespassing at Terrace Club,” Portsmouth Daily Times (18 July 1964).
“Trespassing Charged After Pool Wade-in,” Coshocton Times (18 July 1964).
“40 Negroes Stage Sit-In at Local Pool. Police Remove, Arrest Young Demonstrators,” Portsmouth Daily Times (21 July 1964).
“In Pool Demonstration Officers Warn Against Children in Protests,” Portsmouth Daily Times (22 July 1964).
“Charges in Pool Incident Killed,” Portsmouth Daily Times (28 July 1965).
“Trustees Approach Council. Municipal Pool Plan Considered,” Portsmouth Daily Times (17 July 1966).
“City Urged to Purchase Pool,” Portsmouth Daily Times (16 June 1966).
“Pool Should be Completed” Portsmouth Daily Times (18 July 1966).
"Mayor First 'Swimmer' at New Municipal Pool," Portsmouth Daily Times (19 June 1967): 1 and 12.
Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
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Excavation and Destruction of the Waller-Heinisch Mound

2022-01-14T17:56:48+00:00

Portsmouth High School (PHS) is built upon the location of what was first known as Waller Mound, and later became known as the Heinisch Mound, the earthen structure taking its name from the land's owner. Considered as part of Group B (the Twin Horseshoe Mounds and Earthworks) at the center of the larger Portsmouth Complex, the Waller-Heinisch Mound was originally constructed along the Southwestern Parallel Embankments, which are believed to have served as a pathway for pilgrims visiting this Middle Woodland (200 BCE - 500 CE) ceremonial complex.

We owe much of the history of the exploration and ultimate destruction of the Waller-Heinisch Mound to Clara Waller, who grew up on the property where it was located. She was the daughter of George A. Waller and the niece of Francis Cleveland, an artifact collector who produced the first topographic map detailing aspects of the Portsmouth Earthworks. Clara Waller was also an author, involved in the local literary scene of Gilded Age Portsmouth.
In March of 1897, Waller published an essay on "Prehistoric" Portsmouth in the Ladies Industrial Review, which was edited by the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Young Men’s Christian Association and printed by the Times Publishing Company of Portsmouth.
In her account of the mounds and earthworks, Waller relates that the Waller-Heinisch Mound was first opened by Capt. Josiah Shackford, who is considered one of the founding pioneer's of Portsmouth. Shackford is credited with having suggested the city's name after his hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Waller writes: "Sometime between 1800 and 1815 Capt. Josiah Shackford, and a Mr. Clark, went about digging into these earthworks searching for hidden treasure, not bits of pottery, or shell, or metal upon which hinge history, but for silver and gold, and precious stones. They dug through the Waller Mound, leaving a hole which time gradually filled up, but which changed the conical shape somewhat." Clearly, the earliest of the "explorations" by Shackford and Clark were little more than looting enterprises in search of treasure, not knowledge or a deeper understanding of humanity's past in the Ohio Valley.
The Waller-Heinisch Mound survived largely intact until at least November 1886, when George Heinisch, the new owner of the property, announced that he planned to "dig down the mound and place the dirt on the rear of the lot." The Daily Times opined that "this will afford archaeologists an opportunity of looking for relics, signs and tokens of a former race."
According to Waller, "When Mr. Heinisch recently removed this mound several antiquities were found, one, a piece of pottery rudely made to represent a man's head; it was six or eight inches long. An implement was also found made of granite, highly polished and sharpened at both ends and about the size and shape of a miner's pick, save that there was no eye for the handle. When the bottom of the work was reached the remains of a hearth was discovered which showed that there had been fire upon it."
Waller’s account was essentially confirmed and expanded upon by Charles V. Wertz, with whom Waller, it should be noted, was familiar, the two having a shared his interest in the Portsmouth Earthworks. Writing in 1936, Wertz recalled speaking with the “laborers” who did the excavation and having viewed the artifacts that were taken from Mound as it was leveled.
“This mound," wrote Wertz, "has been partially opened previous to its removal, but during its removal the bones of three badly decayed skeletons were found which had been buried on an altar of burnt clay about eight feet long and four feet wide. Near these skeletons were found three very large granite celts or unproved axes, a stone carved in the form of a human face, a pocket or pit which contained eleven large thin knives or oval shaped spears, a fine clay pot decorated with circles and lines holding about a quart. Also found near this altar were parts of skeletons which had been left by the original excavators. I learned from the laborers that a great number of small beads were found mixed with the charcoal on the altar and an extra fine granite crescent shaped implement or ceremonial, also two flat slate pieces with double perforations. Without a doubt a great many relics were overlooked in the destruction of this mound.”
Writing over one-hundred and twenty-five years ago, Clara Waller emphasized the importance of the Portsmouth Earthworks and their archaeology, telling her readers: “It is by the light of a very dim torch that we invade the ‘Stranger People’s Country.’ In the total absence of all historical records … we can only follow the leading of suggestions given us by the pre-historic works which remain, and the various relics which they have been found to contain.”
The artifacts that were recovered from the Waller-Heinisch Mound culturally date to the Middle and Late Woodland Periods, circa (200 BCE-1000 CE), which suggests a Hopewell origin, with the mound's further modification and use by Late Prehistoric peoples.
Many of the artifacts taken from the Waller-Heinisch Mound ended up in the private collection of George Heinisch, while a few others were acquired by Charles V. Wertz. In 1916, George Heinisch donated his collection to the Ohio Archeological and Historical Society in Columbus, where some eighty-eight items are preserved in their holdings. Currently, the Ohio History Connection, the successor of the original society, is not authorizing the public display of items from their Heinisch Collection.
Thankfully, several of the Waller-Heinisch Mound artifacts from Charles V. Wertz's collection are on display at the Southern Ohio Museum and can be viewed in the Scioto Historical image gallery. Perhaps aware of these items, Clara Waller noted in her essay on prehistoric Portsmouth that “Charles Wertz, Jr. is the lucky owner of an unusually good collection of antiquities.”
Sources:
"George Heinisch ... to Dig Down the Mound," Portsmouth Times (27 November 1886).
Clara Waller, “Pre-historic: Local,” Ladies Industrial Review (March 1897). For a digital copy of Waller’s article and the complete Review see Wandering Appalachia. https://www.wanderingappalachia.org/2021/09/22/1897-portsmouth-ladies-industrial-review/
Charles V. Wertz, “Ancient Man and His Works in and Around Scioto County,” Ohio Indian Relic Collectors Society Bulletin, No. 24 (June 1950): 20-29.
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Fifteenth Amendment Ratification Celebration in Portsmouth, Ohio: Allen Chapel of the AME Church Hosts Integrated Celebration in 1870

2022-04-10T02:15:57+00:00

The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 marked the culmination of a decades long struggle to end slavery and establish a new national republic that guaranteed equal rights to all its citizens, regardless of their "race, color, or their previous condition of servitude." The right to vote, guaranteed to African American men through the Fifteenth Amendment, was thought to be the capstone in a renovated representative democracy, one where racial discrimination was no longer the law of the land. The Fifteenth wrapped up the business first begun with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for criminal violations of the law. The Fifteenth Amendment was meant to establish true equality by opening elections and public office to African American men.

On Wednesday, the 27th of April 1870, a coalition of white and black residents turned out for a celebration hosted by Allen Chapel of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. With ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, there was much to celebrate for those who had long championed the cause of equal rights in Portsmouth, Ohio. The gathering was a who's who of the old local abolition movement, which following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment had become what today is recognized as the Civil Rights Movement. Many of those in attendance had been involved in local politics, the abolition movement, and the Underground Railroad as far back as the 1820s.
The host congregation of the program -- Allen Chapel -- had been intimately tied to the Underground Railroad, with many of its members engaged in the secretive work, tracing their church's roots to 1837, when African American Methodists began meeting on their own in the old Wheeler Academy building on Market Street. In 1868, the congregation purchased the old Methodist Spencer Chapel on Seventh Street, between Chillicothe and Gay Streets. This church structure originally had been built in 1853 by the city's German Methodist society and was named for Rev. R. A. Spencer, who had donated the lot on Seventh Street. In 1868, Spencer Chapel was re-dedicated as Allen Chapel in honor of the Rev. Richard Allen, who is remembered as the founder of the AME Church. This was the location of Portsmouth's celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.
As the congregation grew and the city's black residential area of the city shifted northward, above the railroad tracks into what is now known as the North End, the location of Allen Chapel would move, as well. In 1920, the congregation built their present structure at Twelfth and Waller streets.
The Portsmouth Tribune, a Republican party affiliated newspaper, reported on the Ratification Celebration, providing both a description of the chapel's decorations and the crowd that had assembled. Their detailed description was republished in the columns of the Portsmouth Daily Times and read as follows:
"The colored people of Portsmouth together with a number of their white friends, held a ratification jubilee on Monday evening last in Allen Chapel. The room was handsomely decorated with flags and portraits of John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Grant and Colfax. John Cooper, (colored) was called to the chair, and G.W. Holland, (colored) appointed Secretary. The meeting was opened with singing by the choir, led by Mrs. Weaver and music on the organ by Miss Steele, followed by prayer by Rev. Jas. Mitchell, of Bigelow Chapel. The proclamation was then read by Miss Lizzy Baker (colored). The speaking was limited to twenty minutes each, and Milton Kennedy, the old Free Soiler, who has held on through evil as well as good report, opened with a very effective and appropriate speech. Remarks were then made in succession by Wm. E. Ross, (colored), H. W. Farnham, Capt. Isaac Fullerton, Hon. E. Glover, Rev. P. Tolliver, (colored), Rev. Summonds and Judge Searl. A song entitled 'The Colored Volunteer' was sung by Wm. E. Ross, the audience joining in the chorus. After the speaking, all united in singing 'John Brown's body lies mouldering in the tomb.' The colored folk were out en mass, men, women, and children, and the whites were sandwitched [sic] among them, all enthused with the spirit of the occasion. The celebration was a pleasant success. Everything was done with decency and in order, and no word spoken calculated to reflect upon political opponents."
John Cooper, a longtime member and trustee of Allen Chapel, served as the presiding officer of the program. At the time, Cooper managed a popular restaurant in the Biggs House on Front Street, Portsmouth's most luxurious hotel. In 1875, Cooper would open his own restaurant on Second Street in what was then known as the Huston Stone Front, but which had been originally built by Milton Kennedy in 1853.
A community choir was directed by a Mrs. Weaver, while a Miss Steele played on the Chapel's organ. "The old Free Soiler" Kennedy had been Portsmouth's most outspoken abolitionist, who, along with his brother-in-law Joseph Ashton, assisted runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. William E. Ross, another Civil War veteran, who led the singing of "The Colored Volunteer" would soon become Portsmouth's first African American city council member, when elected in 1894. The other speakers included black and white ministers, veterans, and other elected officials, most notably, Judge F. C. Searl of the Scioto County Probate Court, and the Honorable Elijah Glover, who then represented Scioto County in the Ohio House of Representatives.
Searl had been first elected Probate Judge in 1860 and served multiple terms. During the Civil War he served as the Chairman of the Military Committee of Scioto County, supervising the enlistment of volunteers. And, according to Nelson W. Evans, the noted Scioto County historian, Searl had been an abolitionist since the age of eight years old and as "a friend of the negroes, he believed in recruiting them for service and did so. He put them into service and secured them bounties from $150 for single men to $250 for married men."
Elijah Glover is often remembered as the founding editor of the Portsmouth Courier (what in time became the Portsmouth Tribune). He had a long career in Portsmouth politics, beginning as a Whig and then as a Republican. In early 1870, when the Ohio Legislature voted on the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Glover turned out to be one of the critical votes that had ensured its adoption. The amendment passed by one vote.
When news of Ohio's ratification first broke, James Newman, the editor of the Portsmouth Times, the city's Democratic Party alligned newspaper, penned an editorial that credited Scioto County with its ratification. As the leader of the local Democratic Party and his party's candidate who had recently lost the election to Elijah Glover, Newman blamed ratification in Ohio on his own electoral defeat, demonstrating just how closely divided local residents were on the question of equal rights for African Americans. Glover had won the race by a mere twenty-three votes.
Newman told his readers: “Scioto County is responsible for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment upon the part of Ohio. The vote of the member from this county, in the House of Representatives, decided its fate. The change of one vote would have made the result a tie, and thereby defeated the ratification. Twenty-three votes in this county would have turned the scale. We can call the names of more than that many Democrats in Scioto county who did not vote at the last election. They can certainly never forgive themselves for this inexcusable dereliction of duty. Let this fact be a warning in the future, and prompt every Democrat never to forego exercising the right to the ballot.”
Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment may have marked a new era for Ohio and the larger United States, but it did not mark the end of the struggle for equality and voting rights. The supporters of civil rights that gathered in Allen Chapel would go on to fight racial segregation and other forms of what became known as Jim Crow discrimination.

Sources
Nelson W. Evans, A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902): 299-301.
"Responsible," Portsmouth Times (5 February 1870).
"The Fifteenth Amendment in Portsmouth: Grand Ratification and Speeches by White and Colored Speakers!," Portsmouth Times (30 April 1870).
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Floyd Chapman & the American Black Bear

2013-05-22T12:18:18+00:00

Floyd Chapman was a Field Ecologist with the Ohio Division of Conservation and spent much of the later part of the 1930s researching his dissertation on the “Development and Utilization of Wildlife Resources,” here, in what is now Shawnee State Forest and Park. Chapman and other forest researchers worked out of the Forest Experiment Station in Snake Hollow on Forest Road 6. Among Chapman's more memorable experiences was his first encounter with a wild American Black Bear (ursus Americanus) in the summer of 1937. Chapman would later publish an account of that the day in "The Ohio Conservation Bulletin."
"On July 19th, at about 6:45 in the evening, while David Blyth, my assistant, and I were taking a roadside count of deer, I suddenly noticed a black object in a large ... field at the mouth of Scantling run, near State Route 125. At first glance it looked like a black horse or cow, but on stoping the car, we saw that it was a bear. The animal stopped at intervals to eat a few blackberries, then began to advance toward us until it was only about 100 feet from the car and its occupants! .... The bear stood still, sniffed the air for a few minutes, then rapidly turned and bowled along toward the woods."
Chapman's assistant, David Blyth grabbed the Forest Experiment Station's "new 16 mm. motion picture camera" and began filming, as illustrated in Herb Roe's painting of the encounter. Chapman and Blyth’s bear sighting at the Mouth of Scantling Run confirmed recent, but undocumented sightings of bears in the Shawnee State Forest. Unfortunately, film from their historic encounter was not preserved, or at least, has not yet been found.
According to Chapman’s review of known records, the last American black bear in the Scioto Valley had been spotted about the year 1831 on the eastern side of the Scioto river, in Jackson County - a good 30 miles from Scantling Run. Having lived and worked in the forest and having made friends with residents of western Scioto and eastern Adams County, Chapman, however, was privy to local stories that suggested “black bears never did quite disappear from the wilderness along the Ohio River.” Since the early 1930s, "blueberry, huckleberry and blackberry pickers who venture into the more isolated ‘hollers’ of Ohio’s ‘Little Smokies’ region had reported black bears; sometimes one or even two old bears are encountered, but more often an adult with one or two cubs."
Local lore, which still circulates among residents of Nile Township and the Forest, includes a claim that "the last wild bear was killed in the forest in the late 1920's" in what is known as Dry Run Hollow, near the old Ranger Station and Tree Plantation on US Route 52. The forest, however, seems to have never been without its American Black Bear. In the 1920s, Chapman noted that "several bears" were kept in captivity at the headquarters of the Roosevelt Game Preserve, which served as the original "nature center" of what is now Shawnee State Park. Some of these bears were "liberated" when the "zoo" was "disbanded in 1932. Whether the bear on Scantling Run in July of 1937 was one of these, we will never know.
The destruction of the region's Old Forest in the nineteenth-century shaped the fate of many species that once made their homes here -- the passenger pigeon, the carolina parakeet, the white-tailed deer, and the Wild Turkey, to name but just a few. For the American Black Bear, it was the combination blow of habitat destruction and overhunting that devastated her population.
Writing in 1917, historian Lyle S. Evans noted that “the American black bear was [once] found in abundance all over the [Scioto] valley.” And, appropriately enough, the Valley’s southernmost institution of higher education, Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, the host sponsor and developer of the Scioto Historical app, has taken for its mascot, the black bear, whom is affectionally called "Shawn," as in “Mr. Shawn,” middle initial “E.,” last name “Bear.” "Shawn E. Bear."
The hollows of what is now Shawnee State Forest and Park may very well have protected the American Black Bear from total extirpation in southern Ohio. Chapman and Blyths' confirmation of a American Black Bear population in the southern Ohio points to the significance of the Shawnee State Forest in understanding the impact of American settlement on the ecosystem of the Scioto Valley. The rugged hills and intermittent streams of this region have played the part of a natural Noah’s Ark, which the state of Ohio, thanks to its conservation efforts, helped save in the 1920s and 1930s, and, now has the responsibility, as stewards of these lands, to protect and maintain.
Sources:
Floyd B. Chapman, "Ohio's Black Bears: Their Last Stronghold is the 'Little Smokies,' The Ohio Conservation Bulletin (Ohio Division of Wildlife, March 1946): 12-13.
Harry Knighton, "Shawnee Forest," undated typescript, Shawnee State University's Digital History Lab, Portsmouth, Ohio.
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Fourteenth Street Community Center: "The Heart of the North End"

2014-11-14T13:38:29+00:00

Today’s Fourteenth Street Community Center has its origins in a vibrant black civic movement of the 1920s during the Era of Jim Crow, when Portsmouth, Ohio, like much of the United States was segregated along racial lines. A national civic movement in scope, its local manifestation included groups associated with civic betterment (public health and wellness, recreation, and education), along with black-owned business promotion and networking, but also advocacy organizations that championed social justice and equal rights, including a branch of the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The black civic movement led to the formation of the Portsmouth Welfare League in May 1928, organized in the auditorium of the Washington School, with Dr. W. H. Lowry as President. The League organized committees that would go onto establish various community organizations, including the Portsmouth Inter-Racial Commission, the Citizens' North End Forum, and the North End (Peerless) Luncheon Club.
The Inter-Racial Commission first met in 1929 and was launched in collaboration with the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, with the aim of improving race relations in the city and ensuring that the interests of the black community were better supported by the Chamber and city government. John Evans, a longtime North End community leader, served as the first chairman of the Commission. In August 1931, the Inter-Racial Commission was re-organized with Dr. W. H. Lowry as president. Under Dr. Lowry’s leadership, the Commission would support the creation of a “community center” in the city’s North End neighborhood.
The League also spurred the founding of the Citizen's North End Forum, which was meant to provide a non-partisan platform for civic debate and educational programing. The Forum, as reported by the Daily Times, would "endeavor to extend the knowledge of the Negro people on moral, political and economic conditions of the day and to promote a friendly relation among the members of the Negro race that they may be qualified for duty as useful American citizens. The policy of the group will be to work out inter-racial problems and to set forth information for constructive programs which will be to the best interest of all concerned."
Meanwhile, the North End (Peerless) Luncheon Club, organized in September 1931, took the lead in the movement to establish a "community house," what the Daily Times would call a "Negro Center." In their reporting, the Times explained that "it is the purpose of the club to establish the house for the young people, giving them a place for recreation under stimulating and inspirational surroundings." The first President of the Peerless Luncheon Club was William E. Haley, who also served on the Inter-Racial Commission. The Peerless Luncheon Club had been established as a Black businessmen’s group that met monthly over a lunchtime meal, mirroring the practice of white-only civic organizations, such as Kiwanis and Rotary.
“Community Center” Opens at 1011 Eleventh Street
The Inter-Racial Commission officially endorsed the Club’s plans in October 1931 and by the first of the New Year, 1932, the Peerless Luncheon Club opened their “Community Center” at 1011 Eleventh Street. Located in a rented building on the same block as the Booker T. Washington School, the Center was conveniently located to serve the neighborhood’s youth. The organizers announced that a dedication program "will be presented at 3 o’clock, and the rooms will be open for inspection until 10 p. m. A community orchestra will furnish music for the occasion and the Glory Bound quartet will sing. Mrs. Roberta Pemberton and Mrs. C. M. Linthieum will give readings. Everyone is invited to inspect the rooms and enjoy the program of games and music. The hostesses will be the wives of the members of the Negro luncheon club. Lunch will be served by Mrs. B. Bassett. There will be no admission and guests may come and go at any time during the hours named.”
The Portsmouth Times would report that "more than 150 persons attended the opening of the hall," which will "be run on the order of the YMCA and is for both young people and adults." For its first public program, the Center held what they termed a "book shower," wherein "the public has been asked to come and bring a book or a magazine such as will interest young persons or their elders.” The original 11th Street Center would serve the community for over a decade, until 1943, when a new, larger center building would be opened on 14th Street.
The New Deal & the Construction of the Original 14th Street Community Center
What is now remembered as the original 14th Street Community Center Building was constructed in large part as a result of the Great Depression and the New Deal jobs programs that were created by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Additionally, racial segregation in Portsmouth and related discriminatory policies in Federal jobs programs also contributed to the funding and construction of the original center building.
Interest in the construction of a new and larger Community Center building emerged after the Civilian Conservation Corps established seven camps on the outskirts of the city in the Shawnee State Forest, beginning in 1933. Four of the camps were home to segregated, Black companies of enrollees, each with 200 men. With limited recreational opportunities in the city, white and black civic organizations came together to promote the construction of a new Center in the North End. Under the header, "Need Center in North End," the Portsmouth Daily Times reported that "Attorney Arthur Lynn, D. E. Garner, and Gordon Meixner were placed on a committee to locate a site for a Negro recreational center." The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the National Youth Administration (NYA), and the City Council of Portsmouth would contribute (in their own ways) to the construction of the original Center building on 14th Street.
Councilmen Frank Rowe and George Koerner led the effort on Portsmouth City Council and based upon their recommendation, City Manager Frank Sheehan drafted the "necessary legislation for the purchase of property to establish an NYA recreational center for colored youth of the North End." Rowe and Koerner recommended that the city purchase for $800 a city lot, "owned by Mrs. Tillie Boyer on the south side of 14th street east of Waller street."
The Portsmouth Daily Times reported: "Councilmen Frank Rowe and George Koerner, members of the council committee on public property have been cooperating for the last several months with Rev. B. L. Brantley of Pleasant Green Baptist church and other colored leaders of the North End in surveying and developing a social and recreational program for colored youth."
City officials explained that the total cost of the project would be between $17,000 and $20,000 and that the "city will bear about $5,000 of the cost." Ultimately, Portsmouth voters approved $6,000 in bonds to cover the cost of purchasing the land and providing construction materials. Additionally, the City agreed to "furnish heavy equipment for clearing the site." The labor, supervision, and additional materials would be provided by the National Youth Administration (NYA), which was originally operated as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). William Russell, the NYA Senior Foreman, would supervise “30 Negro youth” for a total labor cost of $11,000.
The Times explained that the 14th Street project "is designed to carry out the NYA slogan of 'youth building for youth.'" The NYA focused on providing work and education for Americans between the ages of 16 and 25. Boys and girls from families who qualified for relief were paid $10 to $25 a month for part-time work that included job training. Overall, the NYA helped over 4.5 million American youths find jobs and receive vocational training during the Great Depression. The NYA had a special Division of Negro Affairs, which was headed by Mary McLeod Bethune, a prominent female African American educator and civil rights leader. Thanks to Bethune’s championing of projects for African American youth, the NYA would help fund projects such as the construction of Portsmouth’s original 14th Street Community Center.
“The center will provide a place of organization for recreation, cultural and educational activities of Negro youth of the city, who number some 600. It will be of brick construction, 52 feet x 71 feet, and will have separate reading, craft and recreation rooms for boys and girls, and a central lounge. There will be a kitchen, an office, a storeroom and rest rooms included in the one-floor plan. The supervision of the center will be accomplished through an organized committee. It will be equipped to accommodate all community activities, providing recreation for the 200 enrollees at CCC Camp Shawnee as well.”
In an interview with the Portsmouth Daily Times, Councilman Rowe noted that the question of “what to do with the youth of our colored community has been an acute problem for some years. They have no adequate and desirable meeting place, no park or space for supervised recreation, no youth program designed for our local conditions. That a community the size of a small village is confined within itself without proper facilities for the social development of its youth is certain to cause city-wide complications.” The Times concluded their coverage, noting the historical significance of the project: "The center will be the first built by NYA in the state for colored youth. It will be one of the few existing in the country.”
The ground-breaking ceremonies for the new Center were held on November 2nd, 1939. The Booker T. Washington School Band led a march of students to the location and a “chorus of choirs from churches in the North End” added to the musical program. After nearly four years of construction, which was delayed by US entrance into World War II, the new 14th Street Community Center was opened on January 1st, 1943. Gene White Haley (the wife of William E. Haley) served as its first Director and Executive Secretary. William E. Haley served as the first President of the Center’s Board.
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General Jacob H. Smith & the Philippine War’s Samar Campaign: American Imperialism at the Washington Hotel

2017-02-11T19:21:05+00:00

“A monster public reception followed by a complimentary banquet was last night tendered to Gen. Jacob H. Smith, by local Grand Army men and citizens. The reception was from 8 to 9 o’clock, held in the Washington hotel. The factories closed early and thousands of workmen mingled with the business and professional men of the city, in the great throngs that shook the hand of the old warrior. Although the banquet was distinctly as stag affair, hundreds of ladies crowded about in the throng to meet Gen. Smith." According to the Akron News-Democrat, the banquet was "the most elaborate ever attempted in Portsmouth.”
Smith's hometown return in 1902 surely appeared triumphant, but he was a man whose national reputation and career had recently been destroyed in the wake of a sensational courtmartial for his role in civilian massacres during the Samar Campaign in the Philippine War.
Smith first returnd to Portsmouth on August 11th, 1902, arriving by train at the Norfolk and Western Depot. An estimated 3,000 area residents came out to meet him. The crowd's size spoke to both Smith's hometown popularity, as well as the national media attention he had garnered recent months.
Among the crowd, waiting at the depot, in a horse-drawn carriage, was Smith’s mother, Charlotte Maria Hurd Smith, who had told a reporter just a few days before, “What matters what he said? Look upon what he has done. Look upon a record without a blot or blemish. Then shall we consider a few words spoken when the atrocities to American soldiers were confronting him on every hand.” Two companies of the Ohio National Guard, one from Portsmouth and the other from Manchester, along with the Portsmouth Cycling Club Band, dressed in khaki, escorted the General and his entourage to the Hilltop home of Judge James W. Bannon, his brother-in-law. Just before dispersing the guardsmen gave three hearty cheers.
The Philippine War, which lasted from 1899 through 1913, resulted from the foreign policy of a group of imperialists within the Republican Party of President William McKinley. After their quick victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States found themselves playing the part of an occupying army on the Philippine Islands, far away from the mainland in the South Pacific. A Filipino independence movement had been working to overthrow their Spanish colonizers for years. Emilio Aguinaldo, the charismatic leader of the movement, provided critical aid to the Americans during their war with Spain. But, when US forces did not withdraw from the islands and the US government did not recognize Philippine independence, Aguinaldo and his compatriots rose up against the United States and what they viewed to be a colonial occupying army.
It was a choice, ultimately the Ohioan McKinley’s choice, to annex the Philippine archipelago and deny the Filipinos their independence. As he famously explained in an interview with a Christian missionary magazine, “there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.” Shouldering what was then known as the “White man’s Burden,” McKinley and the imperialists chose to conquer these far off islands in the Pacific and more Americans died fighting the Filipino insurgents than had died fighting the Spanish.
General Jacob Hurd Smith led American forces during one of the most brutal and controversial campaigns of the war. The Samar Campaign of 1902 was an offensive aimed at punishing and crushing the insurgency on the Island of Samar. An American garrison in the town of Balangiga had been attacked in September 1901 by the local population, with the support of the local police chief and members of the insurgency. The people of Balangiga had apparently revolted in reaction to their abuse at the hands of the American soldiers. The US commander at Balangiga had sent troops out to destroy crops and grain reserves, to keep such food from flowing into the hands of the insurgents; he had also ordered all males over the age of thirteen, at gun-point, to work at clearing brush and repairing the streets of the town.
Fifty-four of the seventy-eight American troops stationed at Balangiga were killed; their bodies were mutilated and burned; only four escaped uninjured. The massacre and mutilation of Americans triggered a massive response that left Samar in tatters and General Smith seated before a court-martial. The Balangiga Massacre occurred two months after the government of the Philippines was transferred from the US military to US civilian authorities, headed by future President William Howard Taft. Aguinaldo had been captured in March of 1901 and it was hoped that the transition to civilian rule marked the beginning of the end of the war. The Balangiga Massacre, however, ended all talk about the reduction of troop levels in the Philippines.
Jacob Smith was born 29 January 1840 near Jackson Furnace, in Scioto County, and he spent his boyhood in Portsmouth and in Greenup County, Kentucky. Having briefly attended a military academy in Connecticut, the home state of his parents, Smith joined the Union’s Second Kentucky Infantry, receiving a commission as a First Lieutenant. Severely wounded during the Battle of Shiloh, Smith was brought back to his parent’s home in Portsmouth to recuperate. After the Civil War, he obtained a commission as a Captain in the Regular Army and rose through the ranks, serving in Louisiana during Reconstruction and then later on the Great Plains, where he participated in a number of the so-called “Indian campaigns,” against the Northern Cheyenne, the Apache, and the Uncompahgre Ute. Contrary to some claims, there is no record of Smith’s participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre of Sioux in 1890. Nevertheless, he had participated in some of the most brutal campaigns in the Plains Indian Wars of the late 19th-century.
Smith went on to lead American forces in Cuba, during the Spanish-American War, where he was again wounded in action at the Battle of Santiago. Smith then took command of troops in the Philippines, where he was promoted to Brigadier-General in March of 1901. After fighting a number of successful campaigns against the Filipino insurgents, Smith was given the task of crushing the resistance on Samar and exacting revenge for the deaths of the American soldiers at Balangiga.
The Manila News reported on 4 November 1902, that General Smith ordered all inhabitants of Samar’s interior to relocate to coastal towns, “saying that those who were found outside would be shot and no questions asked. …. All suspects, including Spaniards and half-breeds, were rounded up in big stockades and kept under guard.” At the same time, Smith cut off all food shipments and trade from the towns into the backcountry, carrying out a policy designed to starve the resistance into submission. Detachments of American troops then traversed the island’s interior, in search of rebel bands, burning villages and destroying crops and livestock.
It was not these general policies that ended up getting Smith into trouble, rather it was the specific orders he gave to one of his main subordinates, Marine Major Littleton W. T. Waller. At the beginning of the campaign when officers had gathered at the site of the Balangiga Massacre, Smith told Waller, “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. …. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” When Waller asked Smith to set an age limit for the kill orders, Smith said, “Kill everyone over ten.” Smith would later send Waller a written order “that the interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness.” During the four and half month-long campaign, an estimated 15,000 Filipinos died on Samar as a result of the actions of US forces.
Smith’s orders were first revealed during the court martial of Major Waller, who was charged with ordering the summary execution of eleven Filipino civilians, who had worked as baggage carriers during one of Waller’s missions into the interior. The eleven civilians turned out to be boys and young men, who were accused of hoarding food and threatening mutiny while helping the US troops march through the jungles of Samar. Waller’s defense would become known after World War II as the Nuremburg Defense – I was only following my orders. Waller would be acquitted on the charges of murder, but the testimony during his trial would lead to the court-martial of his commanding officer, Brigadier-General Jacob Hurd Smith. Smith was charged with having committed “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” The court-martial found Smith guilty and recommended an “admonishment” by his superiors.
The Samar Controversy hit the American press just when the US Senate was investigating the abuse of Filipino prisoners of war by the American military. Soldiers back from the islands testified to having observed and participated in the torture of prisoners. They described the common practice of the so-called “water cure,” wherein a person is tied down to a board and a bamboo shaft is inserted into their mouths. Water is then forced into their stomachs and pressure applied to their abdomen, forcing the water back out of their mouths, or, in some cases, causing the stomach to rupture, which can and did lead to the death of prisoners.
Members of Congress and editorials in the nation’s papers called for a severe punishment of General Smith. “In the records of all the great wars since the Middle Ages,” declared Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, “you cannot find such a disgraceful and wicked order as that issued by Gen. Smith.” Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, one of the most ardent supporters of the war, stated: “Gen. Smith’s order is one which every American should regret. On the surface those orders seem to me to be revolting.” In the House of Representatives, Republican Joseph C. Sibley of Pennsylvania called on President Theodore Roosevelt “to discharge Smith dishonorably from the service that he has disgraced. …. He is a disgrace … to every man who ever wore the uniform of the United States, and he is a blot and a disgrace to our present civilization.” The New York Times editorialized, “These orders are bloody and cruel to a degree which the American people will not believe to be justified even against the most treacherous savages. They will not regard as fit to remain in the service an officer capable of issuing them.”
The politics of the moment proved fateful. Roosevelt, upon reviewing the records of the court-martial decided against a simple admonishment, as had been recommended by the court. Instead, he forcibly retired Smith, two years before his scheduled departure from the service. Smith learned of his punishment upon his return to the United States, when his ship docked in San Francisco.
From there Smith traveled by train to Portsmouth, where he was given a hero’s homecoming welcome. After dinning with his closest friends and relatives, Smith welcomed newspaper reporters into the home and fielded questions. He attempted to justify his brutal orders. The inhabitants of the interior of Samar were, according to Smith, “savages of the most degraded kind. They were nomads and had no fixed habitation. …. The childhood of the natives is a dream by the time they are thirteen years of age. They are ready to take up the burden of life before that time. …. The natives of Samar are treacherous and barbarous. They mutilate the bodies of the dead in the most horrible manner.”
Smith won over the local press. Perhaps, they had never left his side. One reporter, writing for the Portsmouth Daily Times, opined that “He is a small man, rather slim, and is very bald. He is a neat dresser and in his citizens clothes did not look like the fierce soldier who had carried terror to the hearts of the most savage tribes in the Philippine islands.” Smith may have looked well that evening, but the following day he had a nervous breakdown. The planned formal reception and banquet had to be postponed. Smith’s illness made headlines around the nation, with the New York Times reporting “a complete nervous collapse.”
When Smith had recovered, his supporters in Portsmouth celebrated Smith’s long career of military service and formally welcomed him home. The event was held at the Washington Hotel on the 20th of August, 1902, in the heart of the Bonefiddle District. The Portsmouth Daily Times reporter captured the scene: “The lobby itself was a maze of red, white, and blue. The national colors were everywhere. Bunting circled about the columns, and hung in festoons from the balcony and … railings. Flags were unfurled here and there about the room to give the whole a general artistic effect. Pictures of McKinley, Washington, Grant, and Lincoln, draped with the national colors, hung upon the walls. …. Suspended from the center of the balcony was the greeting “Welcome” prettily made from crimped tissue paper.” The Times also reported that the absence of a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt “was noted by all who viewed the scene.”
During the after dinner toasts, Smith, wearing his most formal military uniform, addressed the gathering. Again, he sounded unrepentant and the gathered crowd loved him for it. Reviewing his forty-years of army service, Smith declared: “We have fought to make this a united country; to wrest the great West from the hordes of Indian savages and to protect the frontiersman and his wife and children in their homes; to bring the blessings of liberty and good government to our neighboring and distant isles of the sea; to avenge the massacres in the harbor of Havana, to compel obedience to our authority in the Philippine Islands and to pacify and subdue the most savage tribes of the earth.” The Island of Samar, explained Smith, was “peopled by savage tribes who do not recognize any rules of civilized warfare, but are treacherous and brutal to the lowest degree. Still, they must be brought into subjugation, and kept so until they learn that the purpose is to give them freedom and the blessings of that good government which we enjoy.” Spontaneous applause interrupted the speech numerous times and upon its conclusion, Smith received a standing ovation and another round of three cheers for “Portsmouth’s General.”
The General’s defenders in the press and in Congress claimed that he had been singled out and punished for political reasons, that other officers had implemented similar orders and the brutal tactics of taking no prisoners had been practiced at various times throughout the archipelago by American forces. The press and influential members of both political parties, however, demanded that some high-ranking official be held accountable.
In the first weeks and months after his forced retirement, Jacob Smith hoped he would be reinstated; rather than blame his superior officers for their role in setting the general policies and standards of conduct of US forces, he kept his silence, claiming the circumstances on the islands required what might be construed to be brutal and uncivilized tactics in other places, particularly if it those tactics were used against Americans – an odd and racist form of moral relativism. However, Jacob Smith would ultimately try to shift some of the responsibility for his actions on to the shoulders of his superiors.
In 1906, Smith authorized his nephew, the newly elected Congressman Henry T. Bannon, to vindicate his honor on the floor of the House of Representatives. Bannon, for the first time, revealed part of the orders that had been issued to his uncle on the eve of the Samar campaign. “I do not propose to hamper you at all,” General Adna R. Chaffee had written to Smith, “but on the contrary, give you all the assistance you need to crush the insurrection in Samar…. The interior must be made a wilderness if that is the only remedy.” General Chaffee’s words never amounted to an express command to kill “everything over ten” or to violently torture and humiliate prisoners, as had General Smith’s express orders. Yet, there is no doubt that responsibility for war crimes went higher than one-star generals and were more widespread than might appear because of the handful of courts-martial.
Rather than hold those at the highest levels of the military responsible, where the general policy and orders originated, President Roosevelt scapegoated low-ranking generals, like Jacob Hurd Smith. For Smith and his supporters in Portsmouth, it was pure politics. “To my knowledge,” Smith told a crowd in 1911, “Theodore Roosevelt has never hesitated in sacrificing a friend to further his own insane ambitions and desires for popularity.”
When “Hell Roaring” Jake Smith died in 1918, his remains were transported from Portsmouth, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., where he was buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources:
“Comes Home: Greeted by People and the Dear Old Mother. Gen. Jacob Smith Arrives and Militia and Band Make his Escort,” Portsmouth Times (11 August 1902).
“Smith Exalted by Fellow-Townsmen. Not a Picture of Roosevelt was Seen at Banquet Given Soldier,” Akron Times-Democrat (21 August 1902).
Nelson W. Evans, "General Jacob Hurd Smith," A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902).
Andrew Feight, "The Infamous 'Hell-Roaring' Jacob Smith, Portsmouth's General," Portsmouth Free Press 2nd Series, Vol. 1, no. 2 (November-December 2005).
Paul Kramer, “Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago,” New Yorker (25 February 2008).
Manila News (4 November 1902).
“Results of the Philippine ‘Atrocities’ at Washington,” Literary Digest (10 May 1902).
David Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 (Hill & Wang, 2007). “‘Water Cure’ for Filipinos is Followed by Court-Martial for Gen. Jacob H. Smith,” San Francisco Call (22 April 1902).
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George Remus - 'King of the Bootleggers' - in the Boneyfiddle

2022-04-10T17:09:36+00:00

In 1927, George Remus, known as the "King of the Bootleggers," spent the last month of his three-year prison term, in the newly built Scioto County Courthouse Jail, which at the time was located on the building's fourth floor.

Remus completed the first two years of his sentence in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. For the last year of his sentence, however, he was allowed to return to Ohio, where he was first lodged in the Miami County Jail in Troy, Ohio. After complaining "he was being discriminated against" by his Miami jailers, Remus successfully petitioned a Federal magistrate to have himself relocated to the Scioto County Jail, where it appears he had good reason to believe he'd be more comfortable under the care of Sheriff Elza Canter.
Upon his arrival in Portsmouth, according to a report filed by the Associated Press, "George Remus, of Cincinnati, master mind of one of the most famous whisky rings in the United States, was held in the office of the Sheriff of Scioto County today, due to the fact that the old Scioto County Jail is so crowded that prisoners are forced to sleep on the floor." The AP reported that "the new jail, which Remus was supposed to occupy, hardly will be completed before the remaining 28 days of his 360-day jail sentence will have been served." During his stay in Portsmouth, Remus would be granted "jail trusty" status, allowing him a great deal of liberty, while being legally confined to Sheriff Canter's court house office.
With alcohol prohibition, Remus had made a fortune off the legal and illegal sale of whiskey. While claiming to be operating above board, Remus purchased whiskey distilleries in Kentucky and the Cincinnati area, securing special licenses to manufacture alcohol for medicinal purposes, what was called "bonded alcohol." Remus would then have his own men hijack the trucks that were delivering the alcohol to federally supervised warehouses, allowing him to sell his own whiskey on the black market for huge profits. By some estimates, Remus came to own more than one-third of the legal bonded alcohol produced in the United States. In 1921, "he threw an elaborate New Year's Eve Party. Every guest found a $1,000 bill under the dinner plate, the men all got stick pins and gold watches as gifts, and the women each received brand-new Pontiac automobiles."
Ultimately, undercover Federal Revenue agents were able to secure enough evidence to successfully prosecute Remus for violating the Volstead Act and Ohio State law regarding the maintenance of a public nuisance. He was sentenced to two years, plus a $10,000 fine for the first offense, and on the nuisance charge he received a year and a day in jail, plus another $1,000 fine.
It was in April 1927, while "incarcerated" in the Scioto County Courthouse, that Remus made local headlines, capturing the public's attention: "Remus, Prisoner in Scioto County Jail Assists in Capture of Another Prisoner." In an unusual and unexpected turn of events, Remus helped sheriff deputies capture an escapee, who had "broke loose and run" from the Courthouse. The deputies fired "several shots ... in the ground in an effort to stop" the two men, but to no avail. Deputy Green Willis and George Remus ultimately hopped "into a machine [a police car] and went to Market street where they located one of the runaways." At that point, "Remus started after him and overtook one the prisoners." Deputy Willis would later joke, "although Remus is short and stout, he can run like a deer." The Times report concluded: "So Remus had a most novel experience inasmuch as he himself is a prisoner in the Scioto County jail, took part in the capture of another prisoner."
As the first inmate of the new Scioto County Courthouse Jail, Remus appeared to genuinely enjoy his stay in Portsmouth. "His sunny disposition has made him a favorite with all whom he came in contact and his fellow prisoners have described him as 'a jolly good fellow.'" To celebrate his release, Remus would host "a banquet in the county jail. He served them an elaborate dinner featured by chicken and ice cream. Attired in a white coat, white apron and palm beach pants, he personally served the guests." The Columbus Dispatch would note that "this was the third banquet he has personally served and paid for since his arrival at the Scioto county jail 30 days ago. He was also host to a banquet for the telephone girls recently."
In an interview, granted at the dinner, Remus announced that after his release, he "intended to contest" his wife's divorce suit and planned to write a book on his penitentiary and jail experiences. He claimed that while "he has not as much money as some folks believe, but he has plenty left to live comfortably for the remainder of his life." While in prison, Imogene Holmes (Remus's wife) conspired with Franklin Dodge, a federal agent, who had been working the Remus case, so that the two them took control of her husband's fortune, selling off various properties and hiding the proceeds from Remus while suing him for divorce.
Infamously, a few months after being released from the Scioto County jail, George Remus returned to Cincinnati, where he shot and killed his estranged wife on October 6th, 1927. It was a shocking, cold blooded deed, done on the grounds of Eden Park, "while his 19-year-old stepdaughter looked on in horror." Remus, whose earlier career had been as an attorney, would defend himself, arguing that her death was the result of his own "transitory insanity." The jury acquitted him on the murder charges and he would spend just six months in a mental institution, before being once again freed.
Sources
Karen Abbot, The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women who Pursued Him, and the Murder that Shocked Jazz-Age America (Crown, 2019).
Ron Hogan, "Rich bootlegger George Remus killed his wife — and got away with murder," New York Post (17 August 2019).
"Remus Must Go from Troy Jail to Portsmouth," Dayton Herald (26 March 1927).
"Jail Too Crowded at Portsmouth, So Remus Is Held in Sheriff's Office," Cincinnati Enquirer (29 March 1927).
"Remus, Prisoner in Scioto County Jail Assists in Capture of Another Prisoner, Portsmouth Daily Times (8 April 1927).
"Remus is Dinner Host in Scioto County Jail to 59 Fellow Prisoners," Cincinnati Enquirer (18 April 1927)
"Remus Stages A Coming Out of Jail Party," NewYork Daily News (1 May 1927).
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